Water On Mars: NASA Research Offers New Potential on the Red Planet

In conditions which are much like that found in the rocks in the Mojave Desert, scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center at the SETI Institute at Moffett Field, Calif have found new evidence that suggests traces of water on Mars. The water may be under a thin varnish of iron oxide, or rust.

“The plausibility of life on Mars depends on whether liquid water dotted its landscape for thousands or millions of years,” said Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. In a paper published last Friday in the online edition of the International Journal of Astrobiology, Bishop went on to say, “It’s possible that an important clue, the presence of carbonates, has largely escaped the notice of investigators trying to learn if liquid water once pooled on the Red Planet.”

Carbonates are minerals which typically form within large bodies of water. Their presence on the Martian surface is an indicator that the surface once had large areas of surface water. While the number of carbonates found on the planet so far have been low, the researchers now believe that additional concentrations of then are simply out of view due to the rust.

While conducting their research in the Mojave earlier in the year, Bishop, along with planetary scientist Chris McKay investigated carbonate rocks coated with iron oxides in the area. “When we examined the carbonate rocks in the lab, it became evident that an iron oxide skin may be hindering the search for clues to the Red Planet’s hydrological history,” McKay said. “We found that the varnish both altered and partially masked the spectral signature of the carbonates.”

In addition to their carbonate findings, McKay also found dehydration-resistant blue-green algae under the rock varnish. Because of the additional shielding provided by the varnish layer, the team believes that it may have made Mars habitable for a slightly extended period of time for such life forms as the planet began to dry up.

“The organisms in the Mojave Desert are protected from deadly ultraviolet light by the iron oxide coating,” McKay said. “This survival mechanism might have played a role if Mars once had life on the surface.”

For more information about NASA’s Mars missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars