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Updated December 15th, 2021 at 21:07 IST

ESA's Mars Orbiter finds water in Mars' 'Grand Canyon' area as big as the Netherlands

The European Space Agency on Wednesday, December 15, revealed that it has found significant amounts of water in Mars' Grand canyon just beneath the soil.

Reported by: Harsh Vardhan
Mars
Image: Twitter/@ESA | Image:self
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The European Space Agency on Wednesday revealed that it has found significant amounts of water just beneath the soil in Mars' Grand canyon. According to the agency, the discovery was made by the FREND (Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector) instrument equipped aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) which is orbiting the red planet 400 kilometres above the surface. With this discovery, scientists now have a new location to look for water other than just the planet’s cold polar regions.

(Image: Twitter/@ESA)

The water-carrying area is as big as the Netherlands

In a statement released by ESA, it informed that water has been found in Valles Marineris, which is located at the heart of Mars’ “dramatic canyon system”. Igor Mitrofanov, the lead author of the study and FREND’s principal investigator said as per ESA’s statement-

With TGO we can look down to one metre below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface – and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments.

It is to be noted that the TGO is orbiting the red planet with the FREND neutron telescope, whose job is to map the element hydrogen, which is a sign of water content, in the uppermost layer of the Martian soil. Interestingly, the satellite data revealed that the water-carrying area is as big as the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, another region of the canyon system which has potential for water, as per scientists.

"FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system. Assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water", Mitrofanov added. Besides, co-author Alexey Malakhov explained that more neutrons are emitted when the soil is dry. So if FREND is not receiving enough neutrons from a particular region, it hints towards the presence of water in the soil. 

According to the experts, the discovered water could be in the form of ice or water that is chemically bound to other minerals in the soil. However, they explained that ice from regions other than the poles and particularly near the equator do not remain stable as they get evaporated due to the temperature and pressure conditions. Although the scientists showed confidence in TGO's ability to see beneath the surface and stated that more observations are required to determine the form of water.

Image: Twitter/@ESA

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Published December 15th, 2021 at 21:06 IST

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