A new study carried out by the team that runs the Mars Rover Curiosity confirmed that between 3.8 and 3.3 billion years ago there were lakes in what is now Gale Crater. At its center today there’s Mount Sharp, which foundations were formed by sediments deposited layer upon layer over a very long period. The results of this study were just published in the journal “Science”.

This new study, whose lead author is John P. Grotzinger, is based on the analyzes of data collected by the Mars Rover Curiosity presented at the end of 2014. The new indications confirm the ancient presence of a number of lakes that formed and then dried over millions of years. There had to be conditions that allowed the existence of liquid water on Mars with rain and possibly snow that fed the lakes that over millions of years occupied the Gale Crater.

A series of geological features detected by the Mars Rover Curiosity requiring the presence of instruments on the ground to discover them and analyze them adequately support the hypothesis of the existence of ancient lakes in Gale Crater. The mapping performed using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) space probe helped for example to understand the extent of the sedimentary deposits carried by the water but it took detections performed directly in the crater to collect the data needed to check which of the various theory was correct.

The clinoforms, meaning sloping surfaces typical of water reservoirs, couldn’t be detected by space probes in orbit but only by a rover on the surface. Evaluating the erosion occurred over time on the edge of Gale Crater, the researchers concluded that there was a phenomenon of aggradation, an increased ground elevation typical of river systems due to the deposition of sediments.

The erosion of the border and the north wall of Gale Crater generated gravel and sand that were transported to the south by shallow rivers. Over time, these flows of sediments advanced towards the inner part of the crater producing finer and finer particles that formed a kind of sludge. According to the researchers, this flow marked the border of an ancient lake where it accumulated.

The birth of Mount Sharp was another problem because there were different theories to explain it. The data collected by the Mars Rover Curiosity show evidence that the base of this mountain is formed by sediments that accumulated over time up to at least 800 meters. Evidence on the upper part of Mount Sharp have yet to be collected and it may instead be the result of deposits carried by the wind.

The many data gathered clearly indicate that for a long time there were lakes of liquid water on Mars but it’s unclear how this was possible. The red planet seems to have been for a long time similar to Earth but it’s unclear how. We need more data to understand the climate conditions that existed on Mars more than 3 billion years ago. This will help us to develop better climate models that can be useful to understand the evolution of climate on Earth as well.

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