Scientists Just Found a ‘Significant’ Volume of Water Inside Mars’ Grand Canyon
And it’s ‘packed full of water’.
The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.
Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: “significant amounts of water” are hiding inside the Red Planet’s Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).
And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.
Mars’ Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water
The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter’s Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet’s landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars’ soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. “FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water,” said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science’s lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.
This is breaking news about the discovery of a substantial volume of water hiding in Mars’ grand canyon system, so be sure to check in with us for more updates.
Source: Interesting Engineering
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Scientists Just Found a ‘Significant’ Volume of Water Inside Mars’ Grand Canyon