A NASA satellite has picked up evidence that an ocean of water existed on Mars that may have covered a third of the planet. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back images of what scientists think is a river delta, and a dried up ocean floor.
A NASA satellite has picked up evidence that an ocean of water may have existed on Mars possibly covering a third of the planet.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back images of what scientists think is a river delta, and a dried up ocean floor.
Mike Lamb, an assistant professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology said: “Scientists are finding a rich sedimentary record on Mars that is revealing its past environments, which include rain, flowing water, rivers, deltas and potentially oceans. Both the ancient environments on Mars and the planet's sedimentary archive of these environments are turning out to be surprisingly Earth-like.”
Previous research on the planet’s surface crust content has also suggested that there were oceans on Mars between 3 and 4 billion years ago.
The Aeolis Dorsa region of Mars appears to have features indicative of ancient river deltas that spread out and get steeper as they get closer to their end, just like rivers on Earth when they empty into the ocean.
Scientists theorize that the water from the ocean froze, drained underground, or evaporated into the atmosphere relatively quickly, within a million years at the most.
