RHODE ISLAND, June 3 — The slopes of a giant Martian volcano, once covered in glacial ice, may have been one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on Mars, according to research by Brown University scientists using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Volcano Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars, nearly twice as tall as Mount Everest.
About 210 millions years ago, when a glacier covered the volcano and the surrounding region, eruptions along its northwest flank caused massive amounts of ice to melt and form lakes within the glacier.
Englacial lakes are bodies of water that form within glaciers like liquid bubbles in a half-frozen ice cube.
According to researchers, these lakes could have persisted for hundreds or even a few thousand years, which may have been long enough for them to be colonised by microbial life forms.
According to Kat Scanlon, a graduate student at Brown who led the work, the discovery is interesting because the Arsia Mons sites are much younger than the habitable environments turned up by Curiosity and other Mars rovers.
While 210 million years ago might not sound terribly recent, she said, the other sites were all likely more than 2.5 billion years old. — Reuters
