China’s Mars rover makes stunning discovery in search for evidence of ancient water lucky jet игратьMars may have once hosted an ocean with waves that lapped against sandy beaches 3.6 billion years ago, according to new research. China’s Zhurong rover and its ground-penetrating radar detected the ancient shorelines when it operated from May 2021 to May 2022.The rover landed in Utopia Planitia, a plain within the largest known impact basin on Mars, near a series of ridges in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Scientists have long questioned whether the ridges might represent the remnants of a shoreline, so Zhurong set out in search of evidence of ancient water.The study, based on data collected by Zhurong as its radar instrument peered beneath the surface to examine hidden rock layers, was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.“We’re finding places on Mars that used to look like ancient beaches and ancient river deltas,” said study coauthor Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geology in the department of geosciences at Penn State, in a statement. “We found evidence for wind, waves, no shortage of sand — a proper, vacation-style beach.”What’s more, it’s possible the Martian environment was warmer and wetter for tens of millions of years longer than previously suspected, the study authors wrote.The revelations add to the increasing evidence that the red planet once had a warmer, wetter climate as well as an ocean that covered one-third of the Martian surface — conditions that might have created a hospitable environment for life.
No answers yet