A spectacular nail-biter of a landing was just the
beginning. This was the year Mars’ rover Curiosity proved its worth by giving
researchers unprecedented access to the Red Planet.
Ancient fresh water lake on Mars suggests
life may have flourished on the red planet 3.6 billion years ago
Evidence of lake came from rocks in
Gale Crater near the Martian equator ..Fresh water lake likely had carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur
The lake may have lasted for tens of
thousands of years while sustaining life
An ancient fresh water lake on
Mars could have sustained life on the red planet billions of years ago.
Mudstones from Gale Crater, the
landing site of the Curiosity rover, were formed in a lake that may have
existed on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, say scientists.
The 150 kilometre-wide
(93-mile) impact basin, with a mountain at its centre, is believed to have
supported the lake - and possibly more than one - around 3.6 billion years ago.
Evidence of water on Mars dates
back to the Mariner 9 mission, which arrived on Mars in 1971.
Mariner 9 imaging revealed
clues of water erosion in river beds and canyons as well as weather fronts and
fogs.
Viking orbiters that followed
caused a revolution in our ideas about water on Mars by showing how floods of
water broke through dams, carved deep valleys, eroded grooves into bedrock, and
traveled thousands of kilometres.
Mars is currently in the middle
of an ice age, so liquid water cannot exist on its surface at the present time.
However, the planet seems to have been warmer and wetter in the past.
In June this year, Curiosity
rover found Powerful evidence that water good enough to drink once flowed on
Mars.
In September, the first scoop
of soil analysed by Curiosity revealed that fine materials on the surface of
the planet contain two per cent water by weight.
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