Life on Mars?
NASA recently found shallow deposits of Water Ice on Mars
that astronauts could reach with a shovel. Water ice deposits have been found
to be as little as just 1 inch below the surface. Although this is too shallow,
it has gotten scientists scratching their heads. The scientists are still
trying to collect more data regarding buried ice on Mars. NASA recently
released a picture of the same, which indicates that there is lots of water ice
throughout the Martian poles, not to count the numerous shallow deposits of the
same. These are what NASA wants to focus on.
What is most riveting about all of this is
probably the fact that most of this is underground. The reason behind the same
is simple—Mars has very little air pressure, and hence, water can’t last on the
surface. It evaporates from solid to gas and this is swift and rapid.
Therefore, all of the water ice deposits of the planet are hidden underground,
in the only place where they can survive. NASA wrote in one of its blog posts
---“Martian water ice is locked away underground throughout planets’
mid-latitude. These regions near the poles have been studied by NASA’s Phoenix
Lander, which scraped up ice, and MRO, which has taken many images from space
of meteors imports that excavated this ice.” The study also stated that the
astronauts made use of heat-sensitive instruments to find ice that could easily
be dug up.
The
possibility of life on Mars is also a subject of great interest in
astrobiology. Liquid water doesn’t appear at the surface itself, but it could
form ice, dust particles etc. A very small amount of water vapour is also
present in the atmosphere, researchers said. Many researches have been
conducted to find an answer to the question of whether life on Mars is possible
or not. But this is a definite hint that life on the Red Planet, is somewhat
possible.
-Ananya Priyadarshi
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