Scientists Just Found a 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.

Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).

And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.

Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water

The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet's landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars' soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. 

"FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water," said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science's lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.

Scientists have already discovered water on Mars, but most earlier discoveries detected the substance crucial to life as we know it near the poles of the Red Planet, subsisting as ice. Only very small pockets of water had shown up at lower latitudes, which was a big downer because future astronauts on Mars will need a lot of water, and there are better prospects for settling the planet at lower latitudes. But now, with what seems like a comparative abundance of water in Valles Marineris, we've taken a major step toward establishing a reliable source of water on the closest alien world.

Mars' canyon water could be liquid, ice, or a messy mix

"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.

"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.

Scientists Find Huge Deposits of Water on Mars

Scientists have discovered a large reservoir of water hidden within Mars' gigantic 'Grand Canyon.'

A group of scientists using the European Space Agency's ExoMars Orbiter identified a significant deposit of water immediately beneath the Valles Marineris Martian canyon system, which is ten times longer and five times deeper than our own Grand Canyon.

The scientists discovered genuine water ice around three feet below the canyon's surface after analysing data from the Trace Gas Orbiter's (TGO) Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND).

The presence of water on Mars could indicate the presence of microbial alien life, as well as the possibility of more complex life forms - especially if Mars has the vast expanses of water that Earth does.

“With TGO we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface,” lead author Igor Mitrofanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

“FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40 percent of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water,” he added.

The massive area is about the same size as the Netherlands, meaning that there is plenty of room to potentially find more water.

“We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected,” added coauthor Alexey Malakhov. “This is very much like Earth’s permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures.”

“Overall, we think this water more likely exists in the form of ice,” Malakhov argued.

Scientists are hailing the discovery as a tremendous first step toward potentially finding signs of ancient life on the Red Planet, or even possible venues that we ourselves may one day inhabit.

Reference(s): Icarus

For the first time: Hubble finds water on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede

We have solid evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede – the solar system's biggest moon — for the first time. The frozen water on Ganymede's surface may have sublimated, moving from solid to gas without becoming liquid.

The surface of Ganymede is a mix of dark, cratered regions and bright grooved terrain that produces fascinating patterns. Researchers have long thought that Ganymede has a large amount of water — possibly more than the Earth — but because Ganymede is so far from the Sun, water could only remain liquid behind a thick covering of ice.

Ganymede is assumed to have three primary layers: a metallic iron core, a rocky mantle, and a liquid and frozen layer of water. The ice shell on the outer is extraordinarily thick (around 500 miles / 800 kilometres), and any liquid water might exist beneath it. Regardless, there is water — and where there is water, there may be life.

For the first time, researchers have discovered non-ice water on the surface.

As part of a larger observation program, Lorenz Roth of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden was using Hubble to measure the amount of oxygen on Ganymede. Roth and his colleagues used data from two instruments: Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph in 2018 and archival images from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) from 1998 to 2010.

In 1998, Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) took the first ultraviolet (UV) images of Ganymede, which revealed a particular pattern in the observed emissions from the moon’s atmosphere. The moon displays auroral bands that are somewhat similar to aurora ovals observed on Earth and other planets with magnetic fields. This was illustrative evidence for the fact that Ganymede has a permanent magnetic field. The similarities in the ultraviolet observations were explained by the presence of molecular oxygen (O2). The differences were explained at the time by the presence of atomic oxygen (O), which produces a signal that affects one UV color more than the other. Credit: NASA, ESA, Lorenz Roth (KTH)

The UV data showed the presence of atomic oxygen — at least that’s what the original interpretation from 1998 noted. But much to their surprise, Roth’s team found hardly any evidence of atomic oxygen in Ganymede’s atmosphere. If this is the case, there must be another explanation for the apparent differences in these UV aurora images.

When the researchers took a closer look at the relative distribution of the colorful ribbons of electrified gas called auroral bands in the UV images, they found another piece of evidence: Ganymede’s surface temperature varies strongly throughout the day. Around noon, the equatorial parts of Ganymede may become sufficiently warm that the ice surface releases (or sublimates) some small amounts of water molecules.

This fits excellently with the Hubble data. The presumed oxygen (which Roth now believes to be water vapor) was found exactly around the equator.

“So far only the molecular oxygen had been observed,” explained Roth. “This is produced when charged particles erode the ice surface. The water vapor that we measured now originates from ice sublimation caused by the thermal escape of water vapor from warm icy regions”.

The finding makes Ganymede a much more interesting place, especially considering the European Space Agency’s upcoming mission. JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is planned for launch in 2022, and arrival at Jupiter in 2029. The mission will spend three years making detailed observations of Jupiter and its largest moons — including Ganymede.

“Our results can provide the JUICE instrument teams with valuable information that may be used to refine their observation plans to optimize the use of the spacecraft,” added Roth.

 

Comparison between the Earth, the Moon (top) and Ganymede (bottom).

Astronomers are increasingly looking at frozen moons around Jupiter and Saturn as places where life could emerge. They were once discarded as barren, frozen wastelands, but the more we look at them, the more the potential habitability of these moons seems increasingly likely. Of course, just because there could be life on Ganymede doesn’t mean there is — that’s up for future research to discover.

The study was published in Nature Astronomy.

BREAKING: Scientists Just Found A 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.

Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).

And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.

Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water

The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. 

Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet's landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars' soil. 

It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. 

"FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water," said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science's lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.

Scientists have already discovered water on Mars, but most earlier discoveries detected the substance crucial to life as we know it near the poles of the Red Planet, subsisting as ice. 

Only very small pockets of water had shown up at lower latitudes, which was a big downer because future astronauts on Mars will need a lot of water, and there are better prospects for settling the planet at lower latitudes. 

But now, with what seems like a comparative abundance of water in Valles Marineris, we've taken a major step toward establishing a reliable source of water on the closest alien world.

Mars' canyon water could be liquid, ice, or a messy mix

"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.

"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.

Scientists Just Found a 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.

Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).

And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.

Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water

The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet's landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars' soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. 

"FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water," said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science's lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.

Scientists have already discovered water on Mars, but most earlier discoveries detected the substance crucial to life as we know it near the poles of the Red Planet, subsisting as ice. Only very small pockets of water had shown up at lower latitudes, which was a big downer because future astronauts on Mars will need a lot of water, and there are better prospects for settling the planet at lower latitudes. But now, with what seems like a comparative abundance of water in Valles Marineris, we've taken a major step toward establishing a reliable source of water on the closest alien world.

Mars' canyon water could be liquid, ice, or a messy mix

"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.

"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.

Scientists Just Found a 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.

Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).

And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.

Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water

The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet's landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars' soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. 

"FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water," said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science's lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.

Scientists have already discovered water on Mars, but most earlier discoveries detected the substance crucial to life as we know it near the poles of the Red Planet, subsisting as ice. Only very small pockets of water had shown up at lower latitudes, which was a big downer because future astronauts on Mars will need a lot of water, and there are better prospects for settling the planet at lower latitudes. But now, with what seems like a comparative abundance of water in Valles Marineris, we've taken a major step toward establishing a reliable source of water on the closest alien world.

Mars' canyon water could be liquid, ice, or a messy mix

"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.

"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.

Sun is Older Than The Earth But The Water You Drink is Older Than The Sun

Remember that some of the molecules in your "fresh" sip of water are actually billions of years old—far older than the solar system itself.

It looks doubtful that water existed on Earth before the solar system in which it is located. However, a recent peer-reviewed study published in the journal Science supports this.

Astronomers arrived at this conclusion by demonstrating that water in our solar system had to have been produced inside the huge cloud of gas and dust that preceded and was required for the creation of the star known as the Sun. This implies that water existed before the Sun exploded into a star, water that eventually made its way to Earth via "wet rocks" such as asteroids or comets.

Ted Bergin, an astronomy professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is one of the study's authors. Looking back 4.6 billion years, he thinks there is "a magnificent narrative to be told."

Tiny particles smaller than the diameter of a human hair were employed to construct the Earth. This is referred to as "dust" by astronomers, who, according to Bergin, are "very imaginative people."

These dust particles would collect so much energy at this distance from the Sun that they would become too hot for water to form as ice on them. According to Bergin, this shows that the Earth was dry when it was created. Now here's an intriguing conundrum: where did the water come from?

Bergin thinks that a broader question must be asked: Where did the water in the cosmos come from? "The cosmos is made of atoms, not water," he claims. As a result, those atoms in the universe linked together through chemistry at some point in time to become water.

Fortunately, astronomers can analyse that chemical using tools on Earth. They can recreate the conditions that lead to the generation of water. This is accomplished through the use of a technology known as isotope fingerprinting.

This is accomplished through the use of a technology known as isotope fingerprinting. The second type is deuterium. These elements live in a more-or-less constant ratio throughout the solar system: there are approximately 100,000 hydrogen atoms for every deuterium atom. Water may contain this much hydrogen and deuterium.

Chemistry, according to Bergin, "tells us that there can be an excess of deuterium under extremely exact conditions." This is known as a "isotopic fingerprint." Deuterium is plentiful on Earth and in comets and asteroids.

The isotopic fingerprint is only observable at very low temperatures, between 10 and 20 degrees above absolute zero (-441 degrees Fahrenheit). As a result, Bergin writes, "we already know one thing: whatever the source of the water was, it was extraordinarily, incredibly cold." This is due to the Earth's deuterium surplus. As a result, we must analyse how stars and planets form and ask, "Where is it that cold?"

Temperatures this low are only possible in two places in the huge, violent system where stars first form: the protostar's surrounding cloud of gas and dust, or the accretion disc that is just beginning to form around it. However, there is one more surprise: water is also generated chemically, in a process called as ionisation. The researchers found that the disc is unable to drive it by evaluating a thorough model of this chemical occurrence.

According to Bergin, this shows that the disc, as opposed to the cloud of gas and dust, which are the two most likely sources of water, is unable to do so. Given this, water with an isotopic signature could only have originated from gas and dust about a million years before the sun.

However, this begs the question of how this water ended up on Earth. According to Bergin, planets are formed from the same cloud of gas and dust that compresses and bursts into flame to form a star.

The cloud launched rocks into space, where they collided with the subatomic particles that eventually became Earth. They collided with the Earth and fused with it despite the fact that some of them lacked water. More stones were tossed our way from a distance; these pebbles were chilly enough to hold water.

Therefore, Bergin claims, “when the Earth was birthing, these boulders from larger distances provided the water.” The seas, the atmosphere, and the lovely world we have today were all produced as a result of the water that had previously been a component of the rocks simply evaporating through volcanoes.

Reference(s): Peer-reviewed research paper, Space.com