A US research group has surprisingly discovered a huge volcano on Mars that has been overlooked for decades. Pascal Lee's team from the SETI Institute has now announced this. The volcano, provisionally named “Noctis Volcano”, is located on the western foothills of the Valles Marineris rift system in an area called Noctis Labyrinthus. It was therefore already active in the early days of the Red Planet and could possibly even erupt.
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The formation reaches an altitude of 9,000 m and has a diameter of 450 km. The team adds that the volcano is a particularly interesting research target for various reasons.
Life-friendly environment?
Lee's team was analyzing the traces of a former glacier when the group noticed that they were looking at a former volcano. Different structures would give this away, explains Lee. When analyzing different data, it was also recognized that there is a huge area with volcanic deposits around the volcano.
But the researchers still have some questions. It is unclear when exactly the volcano was formed and whether it is still active. If it was active for a long time, the combination of the heat released and the water present there could even have created conditions that favored the emergence of life, Lee speculates.
Even though there are still many unanswered questions about the newly discovered volcano, it is already clear that it is an exciting target for research missions. Because there may be ice there, manned missions could harvest water. In addition, the foothills of the heavily eroded volcano offer the opportunity to take soil samples from different eras of Mars' history. After all, it is a particularly interesting place to look for traces of possible life. The discovery is explained in a scientific paper presented at a lunar and planetary science conference in Texas.
(my)