A good example is the ongoing mission of the Perseverance rover, which is searching for traces of life in the rocks that fill the bottom of Jezero Crater, which was a deep, vast lake millions of years ago. A particularly interesting place that the rover recently reached is the point where in the past a Martian river would have flowed into a lake, carrying with it a lot of sedimentary rocks. This area and these rocks provide an opportunity to discover the remains of life forms that could have lived in these bodies of water billions of years ago.
but now Scientists point out Another region on Mars that appears to be of great value to those searching for life in the solar system.
Near the Martian equator lies the Hydraots Chaos, the remains of a dried-up mud lake. Everything indicates that huge amounts of water came to the surface from inside the planet. As a rule, it is assumed that the water on Mars froze 3.7 billion years ago during the process of blowing the Martian atmosphere into space. However, the situation may be completely different below the surface, where groundwater in many places can remain liquid for a long time. Moreover, life forms found in such waters can live there for a long time, leaving behind many traces.
After three hundred million years, water from these aquifers could rise to the surface in the Hydraots Chaos region, on the one hand, causing massive floods, and, on the other hand, bringing to the surface huge amounts of sedimentary rocks, which may have contained traces of life beneath. surface at that time.
By the way, the Hydraotes mess actually looks like a big mess. We are dealing here with high mountains, numerous craters and valleys. Over the years, images of this area have been taken using, for example, the US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.
In these images, researchers found a strange, relatively flat plain covered with many domes. The place looks as if the muddy water coming out from under the surface has frozen in place. The details of the process leading to the creation of this area are still not entirely clear. Researchers indicate that the age of the sediments in this place may be only 1.1 billion years. It is therefore possible that this region was still wet at a time when Mars should have been completely dry and unsuitable for any life.
Perhaps in a few years scientists will have the opportunity to remotely verify what the rocks in the Hydraotes Chaos are composed of. Specialists from NASA’s Ames Research Center are working on the EXCALIBR (Extractor for Chemical Analysis of Biomarkers of Lipids in Regolith) instrument, which will be able to search for lipids in extraterrestrial rocks. However, at the moment, it is not known whether Excalibur will eventually fly to the Moon or Mars.
