by A team from the University of Arizona’s Lunar Laboratory and Planetarium used spacecraft images and ground-penetrating radar data to create a 3D reconstruction of lava flows in Elysium Planitia Mars. The researchers found that lava probably erupted through fissures as recently as a million years ago, covering a region on the Red Planet about the size of Alaska.
The team uncovered more than 40 volcanic events, the largest of which appears to have filled a Martian valley called the Athabasca Valles with nearly 1,000 cubic miles (4,168 cubic kilometers) of basalt. These results could have implications for the ability of Mars to support life as we know it.
“Elysium Planitia was much more volcanically active than previously thought and may still be volcanically alive today,” team co-leader and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory scientist Joana Voigt said in a statement. “These areas that used to be considered featureless and boring, like Elysium Planitia, [they are] open books that provide a wealth of information about how they came to be if you know how to read them.
“I think there are a lot of secrets in them, and they want to be read.”
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Mars is red, not dead
Unlike World, Mars does not have plate tectonics. Plate tectonics refers to the parts of our planet’s crust that are constantly shifting and resurfacing, resulting in volcanic activity at hot spots where plates meet or slide under each other. That means the Red Planet is often classified as a geologically inactive “dead” planet. Recent discoveries of Marshowever, this idea has been challenged.
Although no active volcanism has been observed on the Red Planet, operating between 2018 and 2022, the NASA InSight landed showed that the arid world is often rocked by “marsquakes,” implying that its interior must be far from inactive.
Until last year, another team of University of Arizona scientists showed evidence that an area of increased temperature magma called “plume mantle” under the area of Elysium Planitia has been driving intense seismic and volcanic activity for some time.
To conduct this new study and build a 3D model of such activity, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory team took images from the Context camera on board NASA. Mars Exploration Orbit (MRO) and high-resolution images from MRO’s HiRISE camera, combining data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and subsurface radar measurements collected by NASA’s Shallow Radar (SHARAD) probe.
This allowed them to look as deep as 460 feet (140 meters) beneath the Red Planet’s shell, creating a 3D view that showed what the region looked like before lava erupted from fissures.
“Our study provides the most comprehensive account of recent volcanism on a planet other than Earth,” said Christopher Hamilton, co-team leader and scientist at the Lunar Laboratory and Planetarium. “The best estimate of the young volcanic activity of Mars is the last 120 million years, which corresponds to the time when the dinosaurs disappeared on Earth at their peak until today.”
Implications for water and life on Mars
The team’s findings have implications for the effort to see if Mars could once support microbial life. Water is a key ingredient to life as we know it, and scientists know that the Martian surface once flowed in abundance of liquid water, unlike the barren and barren Red Planet we see today.
Elysium Planitia is believed to be a region that once had great floods of liquid water, and there is evidence that when lava poured into this region, it interacted with that liquid water – or, at least, with the water ice. This interaction would greatly shape the landscape of Elysium Planitia.
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory team found ample evidence of steam explosions that would have occurred when the potential water hit lava. This type of interaction can result in hydrothermal environments — regions where water is heated by geological activity. Examples of this here on Earth include sea floor cracks known as hydrothermal vents, which can support a wide variety of life forms.
Therefore, it could also help locate regions of hydrothermal activity on Mars to find regions that would support microbial life.
The volcanic activity the team observed in the Elysium Planitia region may have brought potentially life-bearing water to the surface of Mars in two ways. Firstly, volcanic eruptions can release catastrophic amounts of groundwater, and secondly, water contained in lava can be released into the atmosphere, where it freezes and eventually falls back to the earth as ice.
“When there is a crack in the Martian crust, water can flow onto the surface,” said Hamilton. “Because of the low atmospheric pressure, that water is probably literally boiling. But if there’s a lot of water coming out during that period, you can get a massive flood that comes through, at racing across the landscape and carving these huge features that we see.”
In addition, understanding how water once flowed on the surface of Mars may also be important when considering crewed missions to the Red Planet.
Equatorial regions such as the Elysium Planitia region are much easier to land on than regions at higher latitudes. Familiar water can be found in these areas, even if it is below the surface, it could help future astronauts find water for consumption or to generate fuel during missions.
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The team will continue to study this region, taking advantage of a wealth of data collected using various imaging methods and creating more 3D insights into the Martian surface and the regions below. This will also help scientists create a time sequence of events for other volcanically active regions of Mars.
“Elysium Planitia is the ideal site to try to understand the connection between what we see on the surface and the dynamics inside that revealed itself through volcanic eruptions,” said Voigt. “I paid close attention to the details on the lava surfaces to try to resolve the various eruption events and reconstruct the entire history of these geological entities.”
The team’s research was published on 15 December Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
