Mars Curiosity rover recently found evidence of ancient glaciers at Mount Sharp on the red planet. This supports the hypothesis that water may have once flowed across the surface of Mars.
Rivers of ice may have flowed from Mount Sharp, towering 18,000 feet above Gale Crater, home to the Curiosity rover. This may have supplied water to the basin billions of years ago.
Images of the area were taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Express Orbiter, managed by the European Space Agency (ESA). This data provided evidence water may have once been present, in large quantities, in and around Gale Crater.
Many astronomers believed ancient Mars was either hot and dry or cold and wet. This new evidence suggests the surface of the planet may have once been cold and wet. This could dramatically shape the search for ancient life on the alien planet. Alberto Fairén of Cornell University led the study, which closely studied the images from the orbiters.
Mars rotates on a variable axis, ranging between 25 and 45 degrees, relative to the sun. Every few million years, the angle becomes so pronounced, polar caps melt, and equatorial regions experience plummeting temperatures and snowfall. This action builds the glaciers. When it reverses, the recede.
Liquid water and carbon are essential to life here on Earth, and could be necessary for the development of lifeforms elsewhere. If ancient Mars were truly wet and cold, much of the water needed to support life would have been trapped in its solid state.
On Earth, the earliest forms of life likely developed near geothermal vents. This hot, liquid water was the perfect environment for the formation of the world's first living organisms. If water was in the form of ice, even at the equator, for much of the planet's history, it could dampen the chances of evidence for ancient life being found there. It would also mean the best chance for finding such artifacts would be in warmer locations, like the one the rover currently inhabits.
Mount Sharp is 18 miles wide at its base, and the feature sits just south of the Martian equator. It lies at a boundary region between southern highlands and northern lowlands. Astronomers have uncovered evidence of ancient water at other, similar locations on the red planet.
A handful of rock glaciers in the region extend between 3.7 and five miles in length, and are half a mile to over a mile wide. The formations have a distinct resemblance to a rock glacier found in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska.
Investigation of evidence for ancient glaciers in Gale Crater was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.
