A perspective view of Candor Chasma valley was captured by the Mars Express satellite. The image is from the DLR/FU Berlin.
One of the Red Planet's most dramatic sites may have water ice just a few feet below the surface.
That's according to new research based on data gathered by the TGO, part of the ExoMars mission operated by the European Space Agency and its Russian counterpart. TGO and the Rosalind Franklin rover are due to launch to Mars next year. One of the instruments on TGO is the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector, which can detect hydrogen, one of the two elements that make up water. The site called Candor Chaos is located near the heart of the massive canyon system called Valles Marineris.
A senior scientist at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the central part of the area was packed with water. "This is similar to Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures."
New images show the largest canyon in the solar system.
The central part of the Marineris was packed with water.
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A study co-author is Alexey Malakhov.
One of the most striking features of the Red Planet is the large canyon of the solar system, called Valles Marineris, which is 10 times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon here on Earth. When scientists looked for water on Mars, they only found small amounts of water, because they only studied the surface dust.
Scientists can now look at the upper subsurface and the immediate surface thanks to the new research.
"With TGO, we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what's really going on below Mars' surface, and locate water-rich 'oases' that couldn't be detected with previous instruments."
An artist's depiction of the gas exploration on Mars. The image is from the ATG medialab.
There is water on Mars.
The image was taken by the DLR/FU Berlin. Lujendra Ojha colored and rendered 3D.
There is a search for water on Mars.
The precious compound could make up as much as 40% of the material in the area if all of the hydrogen is in the form of water ice. The scientists believe that water built into local minerals is less likely than ice.
Hkan Svedhem, the former project scientist for the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and a co-author on the new study, said that more observations are needed to know what form of water we're dealing with. The finding shows the ability of TGO's instruments to see below the surface of Mars, and shows a large, not-too-deep, easily exploitable source of water in this region.
The new research is based on data that was gathered between May and February of this year.
The view of Mars was based on data gathered by the Mars Global Surveyor. The NASA/goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio is a credit.
Colin Wilson said that knowing more about how and where water exists on present-day Mars is essential to understand what happened to Mars' once-abundant water.
A paper about the research is being published in the March 22nd issue of the journal.
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