Water on Mars

Water on Mars

Introduction

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar system after Mercury. Have you heard the big news!?

NASA has reported there is water on Mars. Let’s travel to the Mars now..

Using an imaging spectrometer on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO), researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet.

These dark, narrow 100 meter-long streaks called ‘recurring slope lineae’(RSL) flowing downhill are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. Recently, planetary scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale crater, corroborating their original hypothesis that the streaks are indeed formed by liquid water.

Another view of ‘recurring slope lineae’ or RLSs, flowing out of a mountainside on Mars.

Almost all water on Mars today exists in small quantities as vapour in the atmosphere and occasionally as low volume liquid brines in shallow Martian soil. The only plane where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.

Scientists have also travelled deep underground into mines and found microorganisms related to ancient species that once lived in watery environments much close to the surface. Such migrations raise the possibility of the same thing happening on Mars- as the water retreated, life moved deeper underground.

However, while the find is tantalizing for astrobiologists eager to find alien life, it is also a bit of tease. It will be decades before astronauts can visit the surface of Mars and likely much longer before we can drill a mile beneath the dusty surface. So we may not see any expeditions in our lifetime.

Observations of the Red planet indicate that rivers and oceans may have been prominent features in its early history. Billions of years ago, Mars was warm and wet world that could have supported microbial life in small regions. But the planet is smaller than Earth, with thinner atmosphere. Over the time, as liquid water evaporated, more and more of it escaped into space, allowing less to fall back to the surface of the planet.

More than five million cubic kilometres of ice has been identified at or near to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.

Although there are some extremophile organisms that survive in hostile condition on Earth, including stimulations that approximate Mars, plants and animals generally cannot survive the ambient conditions present on the surface of Mars. Surface gravity of Mars is 38% of Earth. Researches are going on this area.

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1^st M.Sc. Physics

Reference

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