NASA revealed a surprise about Mars because the red planet’s surface contains rock samples from the bottom of an ancient and long-dried lake, indicating conditions similar to planet Earth.
A team of scientists, using NASA’s Curiosity instrument, found higher-than-usual levels of manganese oxide in the rocks of Gale Crater Lake on the Red Planet, which is typically found in lakes on Earth due to the highly oxidizing conditions that form manganese crystals in the presence of oxygen.
The discovery of large amounts of manganese indicates that the sediment formed on the banks of a river, delta, or an ancient lake, meaning similar land conditions may have persisted when Gale Crater was filled with water in the past. .
For her part, NASA spacecraft team principal investigator Nina Lanza said, “The Gale Crater Lake environment revealed by these ancient rocks provides a window into a habitable environment that looks remarkably similar to places on Earth today. Indicating that “manganese minerals are a rumor,” he added, “It is remarkable to find such unique features on ancient Mars in the shallow, oxygenated waters found on the shores of lakes on Earth.”
For his part, Patrick Costa, a geochemist and member of the Space Science and Applications Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said, “It is difficult for manganese oxide to form on the surface of Mars, so we did not expect to find it. in high concentrations in beach sediments.”
“On Earth, these types of deposits occur all the time from microbes that catalyze the oxidation reactions of large amounts of oxygen and manganese in our atmosphere produced by photosynthetic life,” Costa added. On Mars, we have no evidence of life, and the mechanism of oxygen production in the ancient Martian atmosphere is unclear, so how manganese oxide formed and accumulated here is truly puzzling. “These results point to larger processes occurring on Mars.”
He continued: “The atmosphere or surface water appears to show that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars.”
The team concluded that manganese oxides were most likely deposited on lake shores in the presence of an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
They say this is further evidence of a long-lived, habitable lake environment in the ancient Gale Crater on Mars, where manganese oxide formation could take thousands of years, depending on oxygen levels.
But the question of where this oxygen came from remains unanswered, although meteorite impacts early in Mars’ history released oxygen from surface ice deposits.
Oxidation by microbes may have left biological imprints and organic matter in manganese-bearing rocks.
It is noteworthy that the sedimentary rocks studied by the rover are a mixture of sand, silt and clay.
Sandstone is highly porous, and groundwater can easily pass through the sand compared to the clay that makes up most of the lake-bed rock in Gale Crater.
