On Monday, scientists said that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity bolstered evidence that the Red Planet was once suitable for life. According to the findings, the planet could have once sustained life after a lake once filled the 96-mile-wide crater was discovered.
During a conference call, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity researchers confirmed they discovered stacks of rocks containing water-deposited sediments inclined toward the crater's center that now displayed a three-mile mound called Mount Sharp. According to The Guardian, the new findings meant that Mount Sharp did not exist during a period of time almost 3.5 billion years ago when the crater was filled with water.
"Finding the inclined strata was ... a complete surprise," Pasadena's California Institute of Technology lead scientist and Curiosity project researcher Prof. John Grotzinger said. "Sedimentary geology ... is the cutting edge for trying to understand the Earth. When oil companies collect seismic surveys across places, they are looking for inclined strata because then you get geometry that tells you where the rocks are that you're looking for."
In 2012, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity aimed to establish whether Mars had the environmental conditions to have once supported life, The Independent UK reported. Its primary goal was fulfilled when shortly after landing on the Red Planet, Curiosity discovered that Mars once had the chemical ingredients needed to sustain life.
The latest findings marked roughly two years of data collection by NASA's Curiosity since it was sky-crane landed on the Red Planet's surface in August 2012.
The new discovery has major implications for past climate in Mars. BBC News said it also implied the Red Planet had to have been far warmer and wetter in its first two billion years than many scientists had previously recognized. According to NASA's Mars rover Curiosity team, ancient Mars must have enjoyed a vigorous global hydrological cycle that involved rains or snows to maintain such humid conditions.
"If we have a long-standing lake for millions of years, the atmospheric humidity practically requires a standing body of water like an ocean to keep Gale from evaporating," NASA's Curiosity deputy project scientist Dr. Ashwin Vasavada said.
Meanwhile, the Curiosity team hopes to answer several outstanding questions in the coming months and years as the Curiosity climbs the mountain and studies its different rock layers.
For decades, scientists have speculated about Mars' early history especially that the northern lowlands could have held a large sea. And with NASA's Mars rover Curiosity results, it will definitely rekindle interest in that idea.
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