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It seems that scientists just can’t get enough of Mars at the moment. Fresh off the back of the discovery of salty water on its surface, new research suggests that lakes may have once been present – specifically at the Gale Crater, the location of the Curiosity rover.
Although lakes have been theorized before, based on data from orbit, Curiosity has been able to perform direct observations on the ground. It has been studying the geology of Gale Crater, 140 kilometers (90 miles) wide, which has a vast mountain known as Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp, that towers five kilometers (three mile) high at its center.
A new paper in the journal Science suggests that large impact craters like Gale were capable of storing water for thousands of years in the Martian past. The theory is based on studying clinoforms, the ordering of sediments on the bed of the ancient lake. The paper suggests that the surface of the crater basin rose over time, caused by the deposit of sediment. Some of this would have come from the northern crater wall, where gravel and sand were moved south in shallow streams. And eventually, wind-driven erosion dumped deposits in the center of the crater, forming Mount Sharp.
“This intracrater lake system probably existed intermittently for thousands to millions of years, implying a relatively wet climate that supplied moisture to the crater rim and transported sediment via streams into the lake basin,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
Read more:
New Evidence Suggests Mars Had Lakes Of Water For Thousands Of Years
Although lakes have been theorized before, based on data from orbit, Curiosity has been able to perform direct observations on the ground. It has been studying the geology of Gale Crater, 140 kilometers (90 miles) wide, which has a vast mountain known as Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp, that towers five kilometers (three mile) high at its center.
A new paper in the journal Science suggests that large impact craters like Gale were capable of storing water for thousands of years in the Martian past. The theory is based on studying clinoforms, the ordering of sediments on the bed of the ancient lake. The paper suggests that the surface of the crater basin rose over time, caused by the deposit of sediment. Some of this would have come from the northern crater wall, where gravel and sand were moved south in shallow streams. And eventually, wind-driven erosion dumped deposits in the center of the crater, forming Mount Sharp.
“This intracrater lake system probably existed intermittently for thousands to millions of years, implying a relatively wet climate that supplied moisture to the crater rim and transported sediment via streams into the lake basin,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
Read more:
New Evidence Suggests Mars Had Lakes Of Water For Thousands Of Years
