The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN), slated for launch in 2013, will look for clues of a huge, potentially life-giving sea likely covered more than a third of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago and straddled the Martian north pole and contained the equivalent of a tenth of the water on Earth [NASA video].
Gaetano Di Achille and Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado in Boulder have been the first planetary scientists to link up all remote sensing data available on Mars' terrain into a single computer-driven model to complete an extensive study published in Nature Geoscience.
The computer models found 52 river-delta deposits scattered across the planet with than half occurring at about the same elevation, and thus probably marked the boundary of the once-massive sea, according to the study. The river deltas would have been connected either directly to the ocean, or to its groundwater table along with several large, adjacent lakes.
In a parallel study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets), Hynek and colleagues catalogued some 40,000 river valleys on Mars, four times the number previously suspected.
The new studies provide critical leads on where to look for signs of early Martian life with the study calculations revealing that the ancient sea covered 36 percent of the planet's surface and contained about 30 million cubic miles of water. Others studies also support the conclusions.
The MAVEN orbiter spacecraft may begin to provide essential evidence in mid-to-late 2014 to add to the body of ongoing research on Mars water and atmospheric participation in the past.
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