A new study from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and researchers from the California Institute of Technology questions whether a long theory about Mars still contains water.
In their research, the team of scientists claims that a large amount of the Mars planet’s water did not escape into space due to the low gravity as previously assumed, but rather was trapped in its crust.
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Although it is known that there was plenty of water flowing on the planet billions of years ago, the team said their findings stuck between 30 and 99% of it in minerals.
Their findings, published in the journal Science and presented at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, were obtained using cross-mission data from the agency’s Planetary Data System (PDS).
The data covers meteorite laboratory work as well as NASA exploration programs for Mars, and the team focused on the amount of water on Mars over time and the chemical composition of the planet’s current atmosphere.
In particular, they investigated the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D / H), according to a Tuesday news release.
“Although water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, not all hydrogen atoms are created equal. The vast majority of hydrogen atoms have only one proton in the atomic nucleus, while a small fraction (about 0.02%) exists as deuterium, or so. “heavy ‘hydrogen, which has a proton and a neutron. The lighter hydrogen escapes the planet’s gravity in space much more easily than its denser counterpart,” the release explained. “As a result, the loss of water from a planet via the upper atmosphere shows a sign of the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the atmosphere of the planet: there would be a very large amount of deuterium left behind. “
But, they say, because the loss of water through the atmosphere alone cannot be representative of both the “deuterium-to-hydrogen signal” in the atmosphere and large amounts of water in the past, two mechanisms are at play: both trapping water in minerals in the earth’s crust and the loss of water to the atmosphere.
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Because Mars has no tectonic plates, it also cannot recover water by the volcanism in the atmosphere, which ‘dries’ on the surface.
“The hydrated materials on our own planet are constantly being recycled by plate tectonics,” said NASA’s Mars Exploration Program chief scientist at Michael Meyer’s NASA headquarters. “Because we have measurements from various spacecraft, we can see that Mars is not recovering, and therefore water is now trapped in the crust or lost in space.”
NASA’s Mars crossbar has already found signs of water erosion on Mars rocks during its astrobiological search.
An important goal of the rover is to try to find signs of ancient microbial life during its mission by collecting and storing both rock and sediment.
Two of the lead authors of this study will help collect the samples that will be returned in the early 2030s via the Mars Sample Return program.
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Meyer, who is part of the Mars Sample Return program, told Fox News on Wednesday that they are looking forward to the ongoing analysis of their “intriguing results.”
“The history of water on Mars and the connection with the astrobiological search for habitability and life is one of the biggest questions we study with our missions at the Red Planet,” he said. “This is ultimately why we hope to collect pristine monsters from the Red Planet with the Mars Perseverance Rover and bring them safely back to Earth for scientific study through the Mars Sample Return campaign.”