A team of scientists from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) showed new evidence that water once flowed beneath the surface of Mars, “revealing that the planet may have remained habitable for life much longer than previously thought”.
Dimitra Atri, principal investigator at NYU Abu Dhabi’s Space Exploration Laboratory, noted: “Our findings show that Mars didn’t simply go from wet to dry. Even after its lakes and rivers disappeared, small amounts of water continued to move underground, creating protected environments that could have supported microscopic life.”
Where there is water, there is life and samples of microscopic life — Atri explained to Khaleej Times — which “are very small life forms such as bacteria that can only be seen by a microscope.”
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The NYUAD study — published on Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets — shows that ancient sand dunes in Mars’ Gale Crater, a region explored by NASA’s Curiosity rover, gradually turned into rock after interacting with underground water billions of years ago.
Atri, together with research assistant Vignesh Krishnamoorthy and other NYUAD researchers, compared data from the Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012, with rock formations in the UAE desert (including Liwa, Al Wathba, Hatta) that formed under similar conditions on Earth.
They found that water from a nearby Martian mountain once seeped into the dunes through tiny cracks, soaking the sand from below and leaving behind minerals such as gypsum, the same mineral found in Earth’s deserts. These minerals can trap and preserve traces of organic material, making them valuable targets for future missions seeking evidence of past life.
“Based on our studies, we concluded that there was water below the surface of Mars, even when the surface was dry,” Arti told Khaleej Times on Wednesday.
Simply put, the key point of the study proves that water interactions with dunes could be prime targets for the search for life on Mars.
In their report, the NYUAD team noted: “Ancient Mars had stable and abundant aqueous environments; however, due to the gradual loss of most of its atmosphere, the environment evolved into cold and dry landscapes that we see today.
“The surface of Mars shows signs of wet and dry environments as captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover. We investigated the solidified dunes in the Stimson formation of the Gale crater. Using data from various instruments on the rover, we studied the interaction between dry aeolian environments with groundwater and surface water, along with complementary field studies in the UAE. We found that water interactions with dunes could be prime targets for the search for life on Mars.”
Arti further explained: “We found that water from below the surface can climb up and solidify the dunes. We found evidence of that in the UAE desert and we conducted experiments in our lab to demonstrate the mechanism.”
“There is a possibility that life could have existed on Mars in the past or at present below the surface. We have yet to explore what lies below the surface. Based on our estimates, conditions are suitable for extremophiles (organisms surviving in extreme conditions) to survive in such an environment,” he underscored.
“Conditions were right for microbial life to survive on Mars but no mission has used a drill to dig below the surface and find out,” Arti continued, noting: “There is a European ExoMars mission and Chinese Tianwen-3 mission, both of them plan to study the subsurface region of Mars. Both missions are scheduled to launch in 2028.”
