Curiosity probe finds evidence that could accommodate lake ... - Reuters

By Irene Klotz

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 9, Dec. 10 (Reuters / EP) –

– Scientists have found evidence of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars microbial life could have developed, researchers said on Monday

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lake, located inside the Gale Crater where “Curiosity” probe landed in August 2012, probably covered an area 50 miles long and 5 miles wide, although its size varied with time.

Analysis of sedimentary deposits gathered by Curiosity show that the lake existed for at least tens of thousands of years, or maybe more, told reporters the geologist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, at the conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

“We have come to appreciate that it is a living system environments including lakes, streams and associates, when the lake was dry, groundwater,” he said.

Analysis

clay extracted from two samples of rocks in the area known as Yellowknife Bay show that freshwater lake existed at a time when other parts of Mars were dry or covered with shallow wells, acid and salty uninhabitable.

In contrast, Gale crater lake could have supported a simple class of microbes that fed on rocks, known as chemolithoautotrophs, which on Earth are easily found in caves and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, Grotzinger said.

Scientists also reported that the clay that forms in the presence of water was younger than expected, a finding that expands the window of time in which Mars may have harbored life.

previous artifacts sent to orbit, land on and explore Mars have given warmer and wetter on the planet, similar to Earth is growing evidence from past studies. The rocks have chemical traces of past interactions with water.

The planet’s surface is full of geological features caused by water, such as canals, dry river basins, lakes and deltas of sedimentary deposits.

Scientists continue to search

rocks that may have higher concentrations of organic or better chemical conditions for preservation, Grotzinger said.

“A key obstacle to be overcome is to understand how these organic elements were preserved in time from when they entered the rock to detect when,” said Jennifer Eigenbrode Curiosity scientific project in the Goddard Space Flight Center in NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland.

(In Nadia Lopez, editing by Tony Jimenez Spanish)