ESA spacecraft finds signs of ancient ocean on Mars

[LongTomH]

There has been speculation for years about the possibility that water once covered Mars northern hemisphere. Now, ESA's Mars Express has found evidence of possible ocean floor sediments.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected sediments on Mars' northern plains that are reminiscent of an ocean floor, in a region that has also previously been identified as the site of ancient Martian shorelines, the researchers said.

"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich," study leader Jérémie Mouginot, of the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) in France and the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement. "It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here."

As part of its mission, Mars Express uses a radar instrument, called MARSIS, to probe beneath the Martian surface and search for liquid and solid water in the upper portions of the planet's crust. The researchers analyzed more than two years of MARSIS data and found that the northern plains of Mars are covered in low-density material that suggests the region may have been an ancient Martian ocean.

These discoveries add whole new dimensions to the possibilities of ancient, or even current, life on Mars. Sadly, it also seems to mark the transition of leadership in space away from the United States (see the recent post on the breakdown of cooperation between NASA and ESA on ExoMars).