Ancient Mars is thought to have had planet-wide storms that filled lakes and rivers with landslides on the planet – sometimes enough to flood the surface.
Using satellite imagery and topography, the team looked at the catchment and watersheds of Martian ‘paleolakes’ to quantify how much precipitation the lake beds and river valleys filled 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago.
Researchers found that there must have been between 13 and 520 feet of precipitation or melting snow in one event, causing flooding across the Red Planet.
However, the team notes that it is now working on determining how long a single episode lasted, saying it could be days, years or thousands of years.
Scroll down for video
Using satellite imagery and topography, the team looked at the Martian ‘paleolakes’ catchment area and watercraft to quantify how much precipitation filled the lake beds and river valleys 5.5 billion to 4 billion years ago
The climate of ancient Mars has been a mystery to astronomers, but geologists say the river beds and paleolakes show a significant amount of precipitation.
But quantifying the amount has been a challenge because there is not enough fluid present long enough to study.
Lead author Gaia Stucky de Quay, a postdoctoral fellow at UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences, said: ‘This is very important because 3.5 to 4 billion years ago Mars was covered with water. It had a lot of rain or snowmelt to fill those canals and lakes. ‘
‘Now it’s completely dry. We try to understand how much water there was and where it all went. ‘
Researchers found that there must have been 13 to 520 feet of precipitation or melting snow in one event, causing flooding across the Red Planet. However, the team notes that it is now working on determining how long a single episode lasted, and said it could be days, years or thousands of years
The researchers were able to quantify an amount, but the range is large – they determine that there must have been between 13 and 520 feet that fell to the surface during a single storm.
‘Although the range is large, it can be used to understand exactly what climate models are,’ said Stucky de Quay.
“It’s an enormous cognitive dissonance,” she said.
‘Climate models are having problems at the moment over the amount of liquid water. It’s like, liquid water is not possible, but it happened. This is the knowledge gap that our work seeks to fill. ‘
The team selected 96 lakes with open basin and enclosed basin, along with their water vessels for their research.
They could then map the lakes, the volumes of the lake and the waterways at the satellites from the surface.
These data also helped them account for possible evaporation to determine how much water was needed to fill the lakes.
By looking at ancient closed and open lakes, and the river valleys that feed them, the team was able to determine a minimum and maximum rainfall.
The closed lakes offer a glimpse of the maximum amount of water that could have fallen in one event without breaking the side of the naval basin.
The open lakes allow the minimum amount of water required to cross the water basin, causing the water to break and eject into a side.
The study comes as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is on its way to Mars, which is set to explore the Jezero Crater, which was once a lake three billion years ago
In 13 of the selected formations, the team found linked basins consisting of one closed and one open basin, which fed through the same river valleys.
These findings provided, according to the experts, important evidence of both maximum and minimum precipitation in one event.
However, Stucky de Quay notes that they have yet to determine how long a single storm will last – it could be days, years or thousands of years.
The study comes as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is on its way to Mars, which is set to explore the Jezero Crater, which was once a lake three billion years ago.
There, the red will search for signs of past lifestyles and will collect stone samples in metal tubes that will make their way back to Earth for further study.
Co-author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor in the UT Jackson School Department of Geological Sciences, was the chief scientific advocate for the landing site.
He said the data collected by the crater could be significant in determining how much water was on Mars and whether there are signs of past life.
NASA MARCH 2020: MISSION WANTS PERSEVERANCE ROVER AND INGENUITY HELICOPTER SEARH FOR LIFE
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will look for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet in a bid to help scientists better understand how life on Earth evolved.
Named Perseverance, the main car robber will explore an ancient river delta in the Jezero Crater, which was once filled with a 1,600ft deep lake.
It is believed that the region has host microbial life about 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago and the rover will investigate soil samples to hunt for evidence of life.
Nasa’s Mars 2020 rover (artist’s impression) will look for signs of ancient life on Mars in a bid to help scientists better understand how life on our own planet evolved
The $ 2.5 billion (£ 1.95 billion) spacecraft Mars 2020 launched on July 30 with a rover and helicopter inside – and will land on February 18, 2021.
Perseverance is designed to land inside the crater and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for further analysis.
A second mission will fly to the planet and return the samples, perhaps through the later 2020s in collaboration with the European Space Agency.
This concept art shows the Mars 2020 rover landing on the red planet via NASA’s Sky-crane system
.
