Meteorites Point To Abundant Water On Mars Long Ago

MARSDAILY

The EETA 79001 meteorite was found in Elephant Morraine in the Antarctic, and was the first meteorite found during the 1979-1980 collecting season. EETA 79001 is classified as a shergotite, the most common subgroup of the Mars meteorites. EETA 79001 weights 7,900 grams (17.4 pounds), and is the second largest Mars meteorite ever found - only the Zagami meteorite is larger. EETA 79001 is only 180 million years old - very young on the solar system scale - and was launched into space from Mars 600,000 years ago. Image by UCSD.

Chicago - Feb. 26, 2001
Chemical analysis of Martian meteorites supports the controversial theory of water on Mars, according to Meenakshi Wadhwa, PhD, associate curator of meteoritics at The Field Museum in Chicago. Her research was published in the February 23rd issue of Science.

Last year, an analysis of images of Mars taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft revealed surprising evidence that the planet was once a watery place. On Earth, sedimentary rock is formed by deposition from water, and the photographs of Mars show hundreds of layers of sedimentation.

It has generally been assumed that Mars is more oxidized than Earth, partly because of its red surface, which is caused by the presence of iron oxides. But the new evidence indicates that only the outermost rind (i.e., crust) of Mars is moderately to heavily oxidized.

This leads to the question of just how did the crust of Mars become oxidized? "On Earth, the most common oxidizing agent is water, so my research supports the idea that abundant water was present in the crust of Mars at one time," Dr. Wadhwa says. Whether water was ever present on Mars is especially intriguing because water is thought to be a necessary ingredient of life.

The fact that the crust of Mars is much more oxidized than its deep interior reveals another new piece of information about the mysterious red planet.

It means that the oxidized crust of Mars has not mixed extensively with the planet's mantle, a layer between the planet's crust and its interior core. "Therefore, Earth-style plate tectonics is not likely to be taking place on Mars," Dr. Wadhwa says.

In contrast, the Earth's mantle (especially the upper part nearest to the crust) is oxidized by "crustal recycling," the mixing of the planet's water-oxidized crust with mantle rocks due to plate tectonics.

Although NASA has plans to gather rocks from Mars, rare SNC (Shergottite - Nakhlite - Chassigny) meteorites are the only Martian rock samples scientists currently have to study.

Dr. Wadhwa determined the oxidation condition of six of the meteorites by analyzing minute amounts of a rare earth element (specifically, europium) in a mineral known as pyroxene, which makes up a major portion of these rocks. The meteorites are thought to have been produced by volcanic processes on Mars 180-474 million years ago.

MARSDAILY

Getting A Cooler Ride To Earth

Pasadena - Oct. 26, 2000
According to one version of the "panspermia" theory, life on Earth could originally have arrived here by way of meteorites from Mars, where conditions early in the history of the solar system are thought to have been more favorable for the creation of life from nonliving ingredients. The only problem has been how a meteorite could get blasted off of Mars without frying any microbial life hitching a ride.

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