A team from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory used spacecraft images and ground-penetrating radar data to create a 3D reconstruction of the lava flows in Elysium Planitia on Mars. Researchers found that lava likely erupted through fissures a million years ago, covering an area about the size of Alaska on the Red Planet.
The team found more than 40 volcanic events, the largest of which appeared to have filled a Martian valley called Athabasca Valley with nearly 1,000 cubic miles (4,168 cubic kilometers) of basalt. These findings could have implications for Mars’ ability to harbor life as we know it.
“Elysium was much more volcanically active than previously thought, and volcanic activity may still exist even today,” said team co-leader Joana Voigt, a Lunar and Planetary Laboratory scientist. said in a statement. “These areas that were once considered featureless and boring, like the Elysian Plains, [they are] If you know how to read, open the books, which provide a wealth of information about how they came to be.
“I think they contain a lot of secrets and they want to be read.”
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Mars is red but not dead
unlike Earth, Mars lacks plate tectonics. Plate tectonics refers to portions of the Earth’s crust that are constantly moving and reappearing, causing volcanic activity to occur at hotspots where plates meet or slide against each other. This means that the Red Planet is often classified as a geologically inactive “dead” planet.recent discoveries MarsHowever, some have challenged this idea.
Although no active volcanic activity has been observed on the Red Planet, between 2018 and 2022 NASA InSight lander Showing that the arid world is regularly shaken by “martian earthquakes” suggests that its interior must be far from inactive.
Just last year, another team of University of Arizona scientists showed evidence that a region of warmed magma called a mantle beneath the Elysian Planitia region has been driving intense earthquakes and volcanic activity in recent times. .
To conduct the new study and build a 3D model of this activity, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory team captured images from NASA’s Context camera. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and high-resolution images from MRO’s HiRISE camera, which were combined with data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter onboard NASA’s Mars Global Orbiter and subsurface radar measurements collected by NASA’s Shallow Radar (SHARAD) probe data combined.
This allowed them to peer 460 feet (140 meters) beneath the Red Planet’s crust, creating a 3D view of what the area looked like before lava erupted from fissures.
“Our study provides the most comprehensive description of recent geological volcanic activity on planets other than Earth,” said Lunar and Planetary Laboratory team co-lead and scientist Christopher Hamilton. “This is an unprecedented snapshot of young volcanic activity on Mars over the past 120 million years. The best estimates are equivalent to the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth at their peak until now.”
Impact on water and life on Mars
The team’s findings have important implications for exploring whether microbial life once existed on Mars. We all know that water is a key ingredient for life, and scientists know that, contrary to the barren, arid Red Planet we see today, Mars once had abundant liquid water flowing on its surface.
Elysium is thought to be an area that once experienced massive floods of liquid water, and there is evidence that as lava poured into the area, it interacted with liquid water — or at least water ice. This interaction greatly shaped the landscape of the Elysian Plains.
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory team has found substantial evidence that steam explosions can occur where potential water meets molten rock. This interaction creates hydrothermal environments – areas where water is heated by geological activity. Examples on Earth include seafloor fissures called hydrothermal vents, which are capable of supporting a vast array of life forms.
Therefore, locating areas of hydrothermal activity on Mars could also help identify areas that are conducive to microbial life.
The volcanic activity the team saw in the Elysium Planitia region may also have brought potentially life-sustaining water to the Martian surface in two ways. First, a volcanic eruption could release catastrophic amounts of groundwater, and second, water from the lava could be thrown into the atmosphere, freeze there, and then eventually fall back to the ground as ice.
“When cracks appear in the Martian crust, water will flow to the surface,” Hamilton said. “Because of the lower atmospheric pressure, the water will likely evaporate. But if enough water escapes during this period, a huge flood will occur. , the floodwaters rushed across the land and formed these huge features that we look at.”
Additionally, understanding how water once flowed on the Martian surface is important when considering crewed missions to the Red Planet.
Equatorial areas (such as the Elysian Plains) are easier to land than at higher latitudes. Understanding these areas where water can be found, even beneath the surface, could help future astronauts access water for consumption or fuel production during missions.
The team will continue to study the area, taking advantage of the vast amounts of data collected using different imaging methods and creating more 3D insights into the Martian surface and the areas beneath it. This will also help scientists construct a time series of events in other volcanically active areas of Mars.
“Elysium is the perfect place to try to understand the connection between what we see on the surface and the internal dynamics that manifest themselves through volcanic eruptions,” Voight said. “I pay a lot of attention to the details of the lava surface, trying to tease apart different eruptive events. , and reconstruct the entire history of these geological entities.”
The team’s research results were published on December 15 in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
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