Categories: Mars

More Researchers Say Liquid Water Present on Mars Now

[/caption]
Finding perchlorates on Mars was not only surprising for the Phoenix lander science team, it also has created a bit of a rift among the researchers. In March, Ian reported on one scientist who used strictly photographic evidence to say that blobs appearing on the lander’s legs were actually water. Other scientists, however, including principal investigator Peter Smith were dubious about the “water on Mars now” claims. But now, a group of researchers at the University of Arkansas say they have now demonstrated a potential stable liquid on present-day Mars in the immediate environment of the lander.

The salts formed from perchlorates discovered at the Phoenix landing site act as “anti-freeze” and have the potential to be found in a liquid solution under the temperature and pressure conditions on present-day Mars, say professor Vincent F. Chevrier and graduate students Jennifer Hanley and Travis S. Altheide. Their research is published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

“Under real, observed Martian conditions, you can have a stable liquid,” said Chevrier.

The researchers studied the properties of sodium and magnesium perchlorates, salts detected by the Phoenix lander, under the temperature, pressure and humidity conditions found at the landing site. The discovery of perchlorates on Mars by the Phoenix mission surprised scientists – the compounds are rare on Earth, found mostly in extremely arid environments such as the Atacama Desert in Chile.

This image was taken by the Phoenix land on the 97th day of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL


The scientists studied the properties of these salts at varying temperatures using the Andromeda Chamber in the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Space Simulation – a chamber that can imitate the pressure and atmospheric conditions found on Mars. They also performed thermodynamic calculations to determine the state of salt and water combinations on the Martian surface and to see if there was any potential for liquid to be found.

The extreme temperatures found on Mars typically lead to either crystallization or evaporation of water, making it difficult to imagine that water could be found in liquid form. However, salts have been shown to lower the freezing point of water – which is why street crews use salt on the roads to melt ice, Hanley said. Some salts, like perchlorates, lower the freezing point substantially. It turns out that the temperature for the liquid phase of magnesium perchlorate – 206 degrees Kelvin – is a temperature found on Mars at the Phoenix landing site. Based on temperature findings from the Phoenix lander, conditions would allow this perchlorate solution to be present in liquid form for a few hours each day during the summer.

“The window for liquid is very small,” Hanley said. Nevertheless, this finding further supports the possibility of finding life on Mars.

“You don’t necessarily need to have a lot of water to have life,” Chevrier said. “But you need liquid water at some point.”

Source: University of Arkansas

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

We Understand Rotating Black Holes Even Less Than We Thought

The theory of black holes has several mathematical oddities. Recent research shows our understanding of…

4 hours ago

Habitable Worlds are Found in Safe Places

When we think of exoplanets that may be able to support life, we hone in…

4 hours ago

New Glenn Booster Moves to Launch Complex 36

Nine years ago, Blue Origin revealed the plans for their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift…

5 hours ago

How Many Additional Exoplanets are in Known Systems?

NASA's TESS mission has turned up thousands of exoplanet candidates in almost as many different…

9 hours ago

Hubble and Webb are the Dream Team. Don't Break Them Up

Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…

16 hours ago

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…

24 hours ago