Mars: liquid water on the red planet "only" a few hundred million years ago
!Watch NASA’s Perseverance Rover Land on Mars
The Chinese Zhurong Rover is originallyof a discoverywhich has something to make the American Perseverance blush . The instruments on board the rover have indeed found strong indications of expanses of liquid water on Mars, expanses that covered the red planet “only” 700 million years ago. This is a major revelation: until now, the scientific community estimated that the massive presence of liquid water on Mars dates back to about 2.3 billion years.
After barely a year on Mars, Zhurong can therefore boast of having participated in a first major scientific touchdown . The analysis of "Martian" minerals in the region of Utopia Planitia will thus have enabled the Chinese teams to reach these astonishing conclusions, all the more astonishing to tell the truth that the period envisaged - 700 million years ago for the liquid water on Mars – is still in the current Martian geological period (known as Amazonian, less than 1.8 billion years according to the standard Hartmann scale)!
It remains to estimate the total surface of liquid water that could cover Mars 700 million years ago, and to know if a form of life, even microbial, could have developed there.
https://kulturegeek.fr/news-258121/mars-leau-liquide-planete-rouge-quelques-centaines-millions-dannees?fbclid=IwAR3ArfNUBkeFcksNyeDQjECiBJWo7nR0jfvY8rI2Sw5jl1s4cQXmiZT637g