Chinese rover discovers strange polygons under the surface of Mars
Miscellaneous / / December 09, 2023
So far there are only assumptions about what this might be.
Chinese researchers have announced new scan results from the Zhurong rover landing site on Utopia Planitia. At a depth of about 35 meters throughout its entire path, the rover recorded strange objects resembling irregular polygonal wedges.
The sizes of objects range from several centimeters to tens of meters in diameter. Scientists believe the buried polygons were formed by freezing and thawing cycles of rocks on Mars billions of years ago. However, they may also be volcanic formations formed after lava flows cooled.
The researchers write that the polygonal landscape requires a very cold environment, and its formation is associated with significant and abrupt climate change on the planet.
The possible presence of water and ice, necessary for the freeze-thaw process, in the wedges could be the result of moisture migration, caused by cryogenic suction, from an underground aquifer on Mars, snowfall from the air, or vapor diffusion to deposit pore space ice.
research team
A previous study of Zhurong radar data showed that multiple floods that occurred during the same time period created several layers of soil beneath the surface of Utopia.
Scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who worked with the Zhurong data, addedthat the rover's ground penetrating radar provides an important complement to orbital radar surveys. It allows us to obtain local details of underground structures and soil composition at a depth of approximately 100 meters along the traverse of the rover. True, each of his finds leaves more questions, but not answers.
Zhurong landed on the Red Planet on May 15, 2021, making China the second country to successfully land a rover on Mars. Its primary mission lasted three Earth months, but the rover successfully operated for just over one Earth year before entering its planned hibernation mode in the spring of 2022.
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