Whereas water was current on Mars, they recommend, the liquid may have trickled via sure rock sorts and set off a sluggish chain of reactions that progressively drew carbon dioxide out of the environment and transformed it into methane, a type of carbon that may very well be saved within the clay for eons.
COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS
The researchers utilized their information of interactions between rocks and gases on Earth to how comparable processes may play out on Mars. They discovered that the amount of clay protecting the Martian floor may maintain as much as 1.7 bar of CO2, which might be equal to round 80% of the planet’s early environment. “In some methods, Mars’s lacking environment may very well be hiding in plain sight,” Murray says.
The researchers assume it’s attainable that this sequestered carbon may in the future be recovered and transformed into propellant to gas future missions between Mars and Earth.
