Kathleen Scanlon of Brown University, Rhode Island, and her colleagues studied data from the NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that led them to believe that the impressive mountain known as Arsia Mons was covered with a massive glacier about 200 million years ago. At times of eruptions ice was melting to form immense englacial lakes. Those are "bodies of water that form within glaciers like liquid bubbles in a half-frozen ice cube," scientists say.
Arsia Mons which is twice as tall as Everest is the third highest volcano on Mars and one of the largest mountains in the solar system. Once it was quite active and often erupted.
They point out that if Earth is of any indication and "glaciovolcanic environments are important microbial habitats" on our planet then the same could be true of Mars. If so, Arsia Mons could have been a habitable environment on the Red Planet.
Scanlon thinks that even in frigid conditions of Mars, subglacial lakes could have existed for hundreds if not for thousands of years – long enough for simple life forms to appear. But could they survive in such an environment?
Scanlon says that "there's been a lot of work on Earth-though not as much as we would like-on the types of microbes that live in these englacial lakes."
"They've been studied mainly as an analog to [Saturn's moon] Europa, where you've got an entire planet that's an ice covered lake."
Unbelievable as it may seem some of that glacial ice might still be present on Mars.
"Remnant craters and ridges strongly suggest that some of the glacial ice remains buried below rock and soil debris," said James Head, one of the researchers, in a news release. If true that frozen water contains "a record of the atmosphere of Mars hundreds of millions of years ago."
He emphasizes that ice could serve yet another purpose: "an existing ice deposit might also be an exploitable water source for future human exploration."
Thanks to Curiosity and other Mars rovers, there is a lot of evidence, for instance, dry river beds, which point to water existing on Mars. However, it was previously thought that those areas ceased to be habitable around 2.5 billion years ago. Compared to this, Arsia Mons is a relatively young site.
"If signs of past life are ever found at those older sites, then Arsia Mons would be the next place I would want to go," Scanlon states.
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