The finding highlights new, potentially fertile areas in the warmer regions of Mars where conditions might be suitable for life to exist, though more study is needed.
Their estimated date range for when the cracks and other dune features formed in Mars’ Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere: sometime after 1.4 million to 400,000 years ago or even younger.
“We think it could be a small amount … no more than a film of water on the surface,” co-author Xiaoguang Qin of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics said in an email.Article content What’s notable about the study is how young the dunes are, said planetary scientist Frederic Schmidt at the University of Paris-Saclay, who was not part of the study.Small pockets of water from thawing frost or snow, mixed with salt, likely resulted in the small cracks, hard crusty surfaces, loose particles and other dune features like depressions and ridges, the Chinese scientists said.
The rover has now provided “evidence that there may be a wider distribution of this process on Mars than previously identified,” said Trinity College Dublin’s Mary Bourke, an expert in Mars geology.
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