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Source: The post is based on the article “Major floods on Mars? China’s rover finds evidence” published in Down To Earth on 28th September 2022
What is the News?
China’s Zhurong rover that landed on Mars in 2021 has found evidence of major floods that took place billions of years ago.
What is Zhurong Rover?
What did the Zhurong Rover find about Mars?
Zhurong Rover studied its landing site – Utopia Planitia – vast plains in Mars’s northern hemisphere.
The radar did not find any evidence of liquid water down to 80 meters but it did detect two horizontal layers with interesting patterns. Scientists think these layers may have been created due to flooding.
For instance, the older, deeper and thicker layer that is between 30 and 80 metres underground was probably formed by rapid flooding three billion years ago.
The upper layer (between 10 and 30 metres in depth) could have been created by another flood some 1.6 billion years ago when there was lots of glacial activity.
Note: Previous Mars exploration missions also indicated that there was once water on the planet’s surface, as well as massive floods.
