Vast lakes of melted ice existed on Mars more recently than previously thought during a warm, wet spell on the red planet, new images suggest.
The lakes might have been habitats for life, if there ever was life on Mars. So far, however, there is no firm evidence of any Martian biology, past or present.
The photographs, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, reveal a network of winding channels linking together several depressions in the Martian surface. Researchers say those channels could only have been caused by Martian lake water running between the depressions about 3 billion years ago - which is 1 billion years more recent than earlier estimates.
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| This close-up view of Mars from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter zooms in on Close-up channels connecting ancient depressions, suggesting that lakes once drained into each other about 3 billion years ago, researchers say. Credit: NASA/JPL/Imperial College of London |
"Most of the research on Mars has focused on its early history and the recent past," said researcher Nicholas Warner, who led the study at the Imperial College of London. "Excitingly, our study now shows that this middle period in Mars' history was much more dynamic than we previously thought."
The new images suggest lakes as large as 12 miles (20 km) wide once dotted the equatorial regions of Mars, researchers said.
Scientists already know that water ice exists today beneath the Martian surface based on data from landers, rovers and Mars images taken from orbit. But past studies have hinted that Mars was warm and wet enough to support liquid lakes around 4 billion years ago.
The research is detailed in the Jan. 4 issue of the science journal Geology. Scientists at the University College London also participated in the study.
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