China's Mars orbiter and Mars rover jointly captured evidence of possible ancient oceans on Mars , which may support the lush and water-rich history of Earth's dry neighbor Mars.
According to China's official CGTN news channel, China's lovely "Zhurong" rover and his accompanying Astronomy 1 orbiter collected data from Mars' vast utopian plain , including mineral information, indicating that water once existed on the surface of Mars.
Specifically, scientists from the China National Space Administration said they found aqueous minerals in the dura strata of Mars, which they called a sign of "large amount of liquid water activity" in distant history.
As of September 15, China's "Astronomy 1" Mars rover has been in orbit for more than 780 days, and the "Zhurong" Mars rover has traveled 1,921 meters, obtaining 1,480 GB of original scientific data, including evidence of the presence of liquid water in the form of hydrated minerals at the Mars landing site.
Scientists around the world have always speculated that water had flowed on Mars, and many rovers missions have sent robots to find evidence in this regard.
Although there is no water on the surface of Mars today, new evidence shows that water may have been around longer than previously thought. Last year, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered evidence of water flowing on Mars, closer than the red planet — probably 2 billion or 2.5 billion years ago, and previous estimates were that there was no water on Mars about 3 billion years ago.
Billions of years without water is a long time, but as we continue to find evidence of water in ancient history of Mars, we will learn more about what our neighbor planet used to be, perhaps foreshadowed what our future will be like.
