NASA finds evidence of liquid water on Mars

The rover signals Curiosity discovered the existence of "pickles" in the surface, when the formed salts in the soil, called perchlorates, absorb water vapor from the atmosphere.


NASA finds evidence may exist 'pickles' on the surface of Mars (Photo: NASA)


The rover Curiosity, NASA found evidence that water can exist in liquid form near the surface of Mars.

The "Red Planet" for its distance from the sun, it would be too cold to be able to keep water in liquid form on the surface but salts in the soil can lower its freezing point, allowing the formation of well saltwater layers - as a brine.


The results lend credence to a theory that the dark spots seen in the images as full crater walls could be formed by water. These recent findings from NASA were published in the scientific journal Nature. Scientists believe that thin layers of water are formed when the salts in the soil, called perchlorates, absorb water vapor from the atmosphere.


The temperature of these liquid layers would be -70 ° C - too cold to house any type of microbial life in the manner that we know. Formed on the most superficial 15cm of Martian soil, these pickles would also be exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation - something that could be considered a
obstacle to the existence of life.

But it's still possible that bodies exist somewhere under the surface of Mars, where conditions are more favorable.

Evaporation Cycle

The researchers gathered different lines of evidence from the body of information brought about by the rover Curiosity.

The Rover Environmental Monitoring System (REMS, its acronym in English) - basically, the weather station of the vehicle - measured relative humidity and temperature of the rover's landing site at Gale Crater.

Scientists were also able to estimate the groundwater content using data from an instrument called Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN). These data reinforced the evidence that the ground water was connected to perchlorates.

Finally, the Mars Sample Analysis instrument gave the researchers the water vapor content of the atmosphere.

The results show that the conditions were suitable for pickles are formed in winter nights at the equator of Mars, where Curiosity landed. But the liquid evaporates during the day Mars, when the temperature increases.

Javier Martin-Torres, a co-investigator on the Curiosity mission and chief scientist at REMS told the BBC that the discovery is still indirect, but it is convincing. "What we see are conditions for brine formation on the surface. It's like when people were discovering the first exoplanets" he said.

"They could not see the planets, but they were able to see the gravitational effects on the star. These perchlorate salts have a property called liquefaction.

They catch the atmosphere of water vapor and absorb to produce pickles. "
He added: "We can see a daily water cycle, which is very important.

This cycle is maintained by brine. On Earth, we have an exchange between the atmosphere and soil by rain. But we do not have it on Mars. "

While one might think that liquid water is formed at higher temperatures, the brine formation is the result of an interaction between temperature and atmospheric pressure. It turns out that the optimal point for the formation of these films is liquid at lower temperatures.

The fact that scientists see evidence of the existence of these pickles at the equator of Mars - where conditions are less favorable - means that they can even show up in higher latitudes, in areas where the humidity is higher and lower temperatures.

In these regions, the pickles can Until the year.