Researchers find ‘significant amounts of water’ in the largest canyon in the solar system.
An orbiter circling Mars has spotted “significant amounts of water” in a formation of canyons often referred to as the Red Planet’s Grand Canyon.
The ExosMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is operated by the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos, detected unusually high quantities of hydrogen beneath the surface of the Valles Marineris canyon system.
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The orbiter is equipped with its Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND), which is able to detect hydrogen in the top meter of the planet’s soil.
“With TGO we can look down at one metre below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface - and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” Igor Mitrofanov, principal investigator of the FREND telescope, said in a statement .
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