{"id":64811,"date":"2021-12-08T08:55:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T15:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=64811"},"modified":"2021-12-09T15:26:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T22:26:02","slug":"water-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/water-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Planetary scientists discover evidence of brief presence of water in Arabia Terra on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of a team of collaborators from Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University,\u00a0NAU Ph.D.\u00a0candidate\u00a0<\/span>Ari Koeppel<\/span><\/b>\u00a0recently discovered that water was once present in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Arabia Terra is in the northern latitudes of Mars.\u00a0Named in 1879 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, this ancient land covers an area\u00a0slightly larger than the European continent.\u00a0Arabia Terra contains craters, volcanic calderas, canyons and beautiful bands of rock reminiscent of sedimentary rock layers in the Painted Desert or\u00a0the Badlands.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These layers of rock and how they formed was\u00a0the research focus\u00a0for Koeppel,\u00a0along with\u00a0his\u00a0adviser,\u00a0associate professor\u00a0<\/span>Christopher Edwards<\/span><\/b>\u00a0of NAU\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Department of\u00a0Astronomy and Planetary Science<\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0Andrew Annex,\u00a0Kevin Lewis\u00a0and undergraduate\u00a0student\u00a0Gabriel Carrillo\u00a0of Johns Hopkins University. Their study,\u00a0titled \u201c<\/span>A fragile record of fleeting water on Mars<\/span><\/a>,\u201d was\u00a0funded by the NASA Mars Data Analysis Program and\u00a0recently published in\u00a0the journal\u00a0<\/span>Geology<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were specifically interested in using rocks on the surface of Mars to get a better understanding of past environments\u00a0three to four\u00a0billion years ago\u00a0and whether there could have been climatic conditions that were suitable for life on the surface,\u201d\u00a0Koeppel\u00a0said. \u201cWe\u00a0were interested in\u00a0whether there was stable water, how long\u00a0there\u00a0could have been stable water, what the atmosphere might have been like\u00a0and what the temperature on the\u00a0surface\u00a0might have been.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo of Arabia Terra courtesy of NASA\/JPL\/UArizona<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to get a better understanding of what happened to create the rock layers, the scientists focused on thermal inertia, which defines the ability of a material to change temperature. Sand, with small, loose particles, gains and loses heat quickly, while a solid boulder will remain warm long after dark. By looking at surface temperatures, they were able to determine the physical properties of rocks in their study area. They could tell if a material was loose and eroding when it otherwise looked solid.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one had done an in-depth\u00a0thermal inertia investigation of these really interesting deposits that cover a large portion of the surface of Mars,\u201d\u00a0Edwards\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To complete the study,\u00a0Koeppel\u00a0used remote\u00a0sensing instruments on orbiting satellites.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust like geologists on Earth,\u00a0we look at rocks to try to tell stories about past environments,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0said. \u201cOn Mars, we’re a little bit more\u00a0limited.\u00a0We\u00a0can’t\u00a0just\u00a0go to a rock outcrop and collect samples\u2014we’re pretty reliant on satellite data. So, there\u00a0are\u00a0a handful of satellites orbiting Mars,\u00a0and each satellite hosts a collection of instruments.\u00a0Each instrument plays its own role in helping us describe the rocks that are on the surface.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through a series of\u00a0investigations\u00a0using this remotely gathered data,\u00a0they looked at\u00a0thermal inertia, plus\u00a0evidence of erosion, the condition of the craters\u00a0and\u00a0what minerals were present.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe figured out these deposits are much less cohesive than everyone previously thought they were,\u00a0indicating\u00a0that this setting\u00a0could only\u00a0have had water for\u00a0a brief period of time,\u201d\u00a0Koeppel\u00a0said. \u201cFor some people,\u00a0that kind of sucks the air out of\u00a0the story\u00a0because\u00a0we often\u00a0think\u00a0that\u00a0having more water\u00a0for more time means there’s a greater chance of life having been there at one point. But for us,\u00a0it’s actually really interesting because it brings up a whole set of new questions.\u00a0What are the conditions that could have allowed there to be water there for a brief amount of time?\u00a0Could\u00a0there\u00a0have been glaciers that melted quickly with outbursts of huge floods? Could\u00a0there\u00a0have been\u00a0a\u00a0groundwater\u00a0system\u00a0that percolated up out of the ground for only a brief period of time only to sink back down?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Koeppel\u00a0started\u00a0his college career in\u00a0engineering and physics but switched to\u00a0studying the\u00a0geological sciences\u00a0while earning his master\u2019s degree\u00a0at\u00a0The City College of New York. He came to NAU to work with\u00a0Edwards and\u00a0immerse himself in the thriving planetary science community of Flagstaff.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI got into planetary science because of\u00a0my\u00a0excitement\u00a0for exploring worlds beyond Earth. The\u00a0universe is\u00a0astoundingly\u00a0big,\u00a0even\u00a0Mars is just the tip of the iceberg,\u201d\u00a0Koeppel\u00a0said.\u00a0\u201cBut we’ve been studying Mars for a few decades now, and at this point, we have a huge accumulation of data.\u00a0We’re beginning to study it at levels that are comparable to ways we’ve been able to study\u00a0Earth,\u00a0and\u00a0it’s\u00a0a really exciting time for Mars science.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/p>\n

Cecile LeBlanc | University Marketing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of a team of collaborators from Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University,\u00a0NAU Ph.D.\u00a0candidate\u00a0Ari Koeppel\u00a0recently discovered that water was once present in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra.\u00a0 Arabia Terra is in the northern latitudes of Mars.\u00a0Named in 1879 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, this ancient land covers an area\u00a0slightly larger than…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":64812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}