NASA’s Curiosity rover has found the first evidence that Mars once had a climate that alternated between wet and dry seasons similar to Earth’s, with a study Wednesday suggesting the Red Planet may once have had conditions suitable for life. Although the surface of Mars is now an arid desert, it is believed that rivers and vast lakes stretched on its surface billions of years ago.

The Curiosity rover has been investigating the massive Gale Crater, believed to be home to an ancient lake since 2012, with a massive sediment mountain nearly six kilometers (four miles) high at its center.

“We knew right away that we were working with lake and river sediments, but we didn’t know what kind of climate they were associated with,” William Rapin, a researcher at France’s CNRS research center and lead author of the study, told AFP.

Climbing the slope of a sedimentary mountain in 2021, Curiosity found salt deposits in the soil that form a hexagonal pattern dating back about four billion years.

According to a study published in the journal Nature the navigator’s tools described the molds as cracks in dried mud.

“When the lake dries up, the silt cracks, and when it fills up again, the cracks heal,” Rapin explained.

When you repeat this process enough, the cracks will line up in a hexagonal shape. “The first concrete evidence that Mars has a cyclical climate,” Rapin said. According to the researchers, regular rainy and dry seasons, such as on Earth, can provide the necessary conditions for life to emerge.

“Lucky Enough”

Curiosity has already identified the presence of organic compounds believed to be the building blocks of life on Mars, which may be another piece of the puzzle. But these building blocks need the right conditions to become the precursors of life.

“In a very dry world, these molecules never have a chance to form, just as they would in a very wet world,” Rapin said. Said.

But put aside the thoughts of big-headed green men – if there is life on Mars, it’s most likely primitive single-celled microorganisms.

“Over 11 years, we found a lot of evidence that ancient Mars may have supported microbial life,” said Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“The mission has now found evidence of conditions that may have also supported the origin of life,” he said in a statement.

Discovery of such an ancient land has never been possible on Earth, where tectonic plates are constantly changing the surface and weeding out such remnants of the past. This means that studying Mars, which has no tectonic plates, could help scientists unravel the mystery of how life arose on our home planet.

“We’re very lucky to have a planet like Mars soon that still has the memory of the natural processes that could have given birth to life,” Rapin said. Source