A new map of Mars is altering our perception of the planet's watery past, and indicating potential landing sites for future missions. The map shows mineral deposits across the red planet. It has been painstakingly created over the last decade using data from ESA’s Mars Express Observatoire pour l
Data from ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have been used to create the first detailed global map of hydrated mineral deposits on Mars. See below for an annotated version with mineral types and abundances. Credit: ESA/Mars Express and NASA/Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is altering our perception of the planet’s watery past, and indicating potential landing sites for future missions.
Data from two Mars missions have been used to create the first detailed global map of hydrated mineral deposits on Mars. These minerals are predominately clays and salts, and can be used to tell the history of water in the planet’s various regions. For the most part, the clays were created on Mars during its early wet period, whereas many of the salts that are still visible today were produced as the water gradually dried up.
On Earth, clays are created when water interacts with rocks, with different conditions giving rise to different types of clays. For instance, clay minerals such as smectite and vermiculite form when relatively small amounts of water interact with the rock. Therefore, they retain mostly the same chemical elements as the original volcanic rocks. In the case of smectite and vermiculite, those elements are iron and magnesium. The rocks can be altered more when the amount of water is relatively high.
ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have mapped water-rich rocks across Mars. The new global map is changing the way we think about the planet’s watery past, and shows where we could land future missions for further exploration. A big surprise is the prevalence of these minerals, with the map revealing hundreds of thousands of water-affected locations in the oldest parts of the planet.
“I think we have collectively oversimplified Mars,” says Carter. He explains that planetary scientists have tended to think that only a few types of clay minerals on Mars were created during its wet period, then as the water gradually dried up, salts were produced across the planet.
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