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Mars from Hubble

For years, the conventional wisdom was that Mars existed as little more than a cold, barren dust ball in space. The idea that it one time supported life was considered unlikely. Just then we started sending probes the the Cherry Planet, and more recently rovers like Curiosity. Since its arrival in 2022, Curiosity has covered more ground than all previous rovers, and now mission scientists are comfortable saying that Mars would have been capable of harboring life for hundreds of millions of years in the by.

Marvel landed in a region known equally Yellowknife in Gale Crater, and has been making its way up to higher elevations around Mountain Sharp, which is in the middle of Gale Crater. This gives it a run a risk to investigate the strata equally information technology ascends, substantially scanning the Martian past.

The new proclamation of Mars as a potential long-term habitation to ancient life comes from Curiosity science team fellow member John Grotzinger, who spoke on the topic at a contempo coming together of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Nosotros've known from samples all the way back to Yellowknife that Gale Crater well-nigh likely played host to a vast lake and stream organization, but it was non present continuously. That doesn't necessarily mean everything living at that place disappeared with the h2o, though.

According to Grotzinger, assay of Curiosity data from various levels in Gale Crater paint a motion picture of fresh, neutral pH water that got more acidic and salty over fourth dimension. The lakes also completely stale up and refilled repeatedly over the course of millions of years. Despite this, simple microorganisms could take persisted in the groundwater, set up to take advantage when standing water again flooded the surface.

curiosity

Marvel has also identified a great diversity of minerals on Mars, which points to a complex chemical history — just the sort of matter life requires. The rover has detected many of the same minerals we have on Earth, including clays, magnetite, and boron. In that location'due south even silica, which scientists are particularly happy virtually. On Earth, silica has been good at preserving microscopic fossils. If life did be on Mars in the past, we might find strong evidence for it in silica deposits.

This is all bold alien life on Mars operates by the same rules equally life on Globe. That's certainly not a given. Even life on Globe can seem almost alien at times. Single-celled extremophiles can survive (and even thrive) in conditions likewise hot, acidic, or salty for any other organism. Mayhap something like that lived (or lives?) on Mars. We might observe more clues when NASA'southward 2022 rover project heads to the Ruby Planet.