Signs of Ancient Mars Lakes and Quakes

Signs of Ancient Mars Lakes and Quakes Seen in New Map

Long ago, in the largest canyon system in our solar system, vibrations from "marsquakes" shook soft sediments that had accumulated in Martian lakes.

The shaken sediments formed features that now appear as a series of low hills apparent in a geological map based on NASA images. The map was released today by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

This map of the western Candor Chasma canyon within Mars' Valles Marineris is the highest-resolution Martian geological map ever relased by USGS. It is derived from images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reveal details smaller than a desk.

Western Candor Colles Region of Mars

"...hydrologic modeling indicates that spring-fed lakes likely occurred within the chasma (Andrews-Hanna and others, 2010). These recent findings point to a scenario in which the layered deposits accumulated as sequences of evaporites precipitating in hypersaline lakes, with contemporaneous trapping of eolian dust and sand, diagenesis, and iron-cycling, interspersed with periods of eolian and fluvial erosion (Murchie and others, 2009a). Water vapor released from these lakes may have also driven localized precipitation of snow and accumulation of layered deposits on the adjacent plateaus (Kite and others, 2011a,b). This scenario is in contrast to recent alternative interpretations that the layered deposits formed within the chasma through weathering of dust-rich ice deposits (Niles and Michalski, 2009; Michalski and Niles, 2012).

New Photos indicate presence of Water on Mars

The NASA robotic explorer, 'Curiosity', has sent some interesting images from the Gale Crater. The rover landed on the planet in order to look for clues from the planet's past and has been sending interesting information and data.

The Curiosity rover took several photos of the Gale Crater earlier, which has a width of 96 mile and is about three to four billion years old. Previous photos indicate presence of water and life-forging molecules over there and now the photos taken by the rover indicates the presence of large, long-lasting bodies of water for the first time. This would also help explain the presence of Aeolis Mons, which is a mountain at the crater's center.

As per Pamela Conrad, a researcher from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, there's a lot to find out about Mars' past related to water from the color and layering of the rocks in the photos.

Red Planet shows signs of life

The Curiosity rover of US space agency NASA has revealed the data that suggests that the Gale Crater on Mars used to be a huge lake of water in the ancient times. The rover landed on the Martian surface in August 5, 2012. After navigating the surface of the Red planet for two years, the rover has finally made its way to Mount Sharp.

Now, the rover has revealed pictures and results that indicate that the Mountain sits inside of a crater; and within that crater it appears there are layers of sediment.

This suggests that over the billions of years since the crater formed, there was probably water and at one point maybe a very long time ago there was also life.