Yangtze River Daily News (Reporter Chen Xiaotong, Correspondent Yu Chunmei, Sun Yanqin) Water activity on the surface of Mars is a key scientific issue in assessing the habitability of Mars. On April 4, a reporter from the Yangtze River Daily learned from China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) that Professor Xiao Long's research team had made a new scientific breakthrough, and they found the latest evidence of recent water activity on Mars.
Associate researcher Zhao Jiannan, a member of the team and the Key Laboratory of Geological Exploration and Evaluation of the Ministry of Education, introduced that a variety of water activity geomorphology and minerals formed by water participation have been found on the surface of Mars, proving that there was a large amount of surface water on Mars. For many years, the characteristics of Mars' water activity have been the focus of Mars Exploration and Research Institute, and the industry has extensively explored the reasons for the disappearance of surface water on Mars through the study of Martian meteorites and atmosphere.
At present, the water of Mars is mainly distributed in the form of ice at the poles and underground, and scientists have carried out research on how to determine their reserves, how to mine and use this water ice, which will support the future human landing on Mars and the establishment of a Mars base. However, since samples have not yet been retrieved from Mars, the jury is still out on when the most recent water activity on Mars took place.
"From about 30 billion years ago to the present, the Martian climate as a whole has been extremely dry and cold, during which there may have been brief surface water activity, but there is no recognized most recent water activity." Zhao Jiannan said that some researchers have found some striped features that still appear and disappear repeatedly with seasonal changes on the slopes of the Martian surface, suggesting that they may be formed by the activity of liquid water, but they have also been questioned.
In May 2021, the Zhurong rover carried by China's "Tianwen-5" probe landed in the southern part of the Utopia Plain, bringing back more evidence. Wang Jiang, a member of the team and a teacher from the School of Earth Sciences, told the Yangtze River Daily reporter that there are a large number of lateral aeolian ridges distributed within the landing and patrol range of Zhurong, which is a special type of aeolian landform on the surface of Mars and an important carrier for studying the atmospheric movement and climate characteristics of Mars. Using high-resolution remote sensing data, the team identified 2 lateral aeolian ridges within 2km×354km of the rover's landing area, divided three types according to morphological characteristics, and proposed a two-stage evolution model of transverse aeolian ridges in this region.
The research team used the navigation and terrain camera data of Zhurong to delineate the morphological characteristics of the lateral aeolian ridge surface on the rover's patrol route, and identified small polygonal fractures on the surface of the Mars transverse aeolian ridge for the first time. At the same time, by interpreting the in situ spectral data, it is found that there may be aqueous sulfate minerals such as gypsum on the surface of these fracture distribution areas, indicating that water plays an important role in the formation of these polygonal fractures.
"Since the lateral aeolian ridge is a relatively young landform on the surface of Mars, probably less than 100 million years old, and these polygonal fractures formed in the later stages of the evolution of the lateral aeolian ridge, we believe that this may indicate the recent water activity and surface-atmosphere water exchange process on Mars, providing clues for studying the water cycle of Mars under the current cold and arid climate conditions." Zhao Jiannan said frankly that in order to further confirm whether Mars has water activity in the near future, more exploration data is needed, and China will sample from Mars and return to Earth for research around 2030, when it is expected to further confirm the history of water activity on Mars.
The study, "Recent Water Activity on Mars: Evidence from the Transverse Aeolian Ridges of the Utopian Plain of the Zhurong Landing Area," was recently published as a cover article in Geophysical Research Letters. The first author of the paper is Dr. Wang Jiang, School of Earth Sciences, and the corresponding author is Zhao Jiannan, associate researcher of the Key Laboratory of Geological Exploration and Evaluation of the Ministry of Education. The results have been jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Civil Aerospace Pre-research Project.
In recent years, the team has carried out long-term research on Martian water activities, and newly discovered a large number of dry lake basins, river valleys and deltas on the surface of Mars, analyzed their formation era and formation mechanism, and revealed the geological and climatic environment evolution characteristics of Mars. At the same time, the team also carried out nearly 10 years of field research based on the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai, China, and carried out analogous research on the geomorphology of Earth and Mars water activities and water-bearing minerals, which provided support for further understanding of Martian water activities.
[3rd Edition]