Curiosity Rover findings indicate stratified lake on ancient Mars

This evenly layered rock imaged in 2014 by the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit near where flowing water entered a lake. Shallow and deep parts of an ancient Martian lake left different clues in mudstone formed from lakebed deposits. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

The primary goal of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission is to explore, investigate and assess the surface the local region on Mars where it landed quantitatively to potentially search for habitability of the red planet, be it in its past or present. For that, an important part of the mission is the investigation of the surface chemical conditions and paleoclimate of ancient Mars. For such purpose Gale crater was selected, which hosts a 5-km-tall mountain of layered sedimentary rock preserving a long-duration record of Martian environmental conditions. 

Geological reconstructions from Curiosity rover data have revealed an ancient, habitable lake environment that was sustained for tens of thousands to tens of millions of years by rivers draining into the crater. This long-lasting lake on ancient Mars provided stable environmental conditions that differed significantly from one part of the lake to another, according to a comprehensive look at findings from the first three-and-a-half years of NASA's Curiosity rover mission. While previous work had revealed the presence of a lake more than three billion years ago in Mars' Gale Crater, this study defines the lake's chemical conditions and uses Curiosity's powerful payload to determine that the lake was stratified.

Daybreak at Gale Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Stratified bodies of water exhibit sharp chemical or physical differences between deep water and shallow water. In Gale's lake, the shallow water was richer in oxidants than deeper water was.

"We're learning that in parts of the lake and at certain times, the water carried more oxygen," said Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the study, published in the journal Science. "This matters because it affects what minerals are deposited in the sediments, and also because oxygen is important for life. But we have to remember that at the time of Gale Lake, life on our planet had not yet adapted to using oxygen — photosynthesis had not yet been invented. Instead, the oxidation state of certain elements like manganese or iron may have been more important for life, if it ever existed on Mars. These oxidation states would be controlled by the dissolved oxygen content of the water."

This diagram presents some of the processes and clues related to a long-ago lake on Mars that became stratified, with the shallow water richer in oxidants than deeper water was. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stony Brook University.

"These were very different, co-existing environments in the same lake," said Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University, lead author of the report. "This type of oxidant stratification is a common feature of lakes on Earth, and now we've found it on Mars. The diversity of environments in this Martian lake would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive."

Simulated view of ancient lake on Gale Crater on Mars filled. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

Whether Mars has ever hosted any life is still unknown, but seeking signs of life on any planet, whether Earth, Mars or more-distant icy worlds, begins with reconstruction of the environment to determine if it was capable of supporting life. NASA is using Curiosity to explore habitable environments on the ancient surface of Mars.

Sources: Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, Wikipedia