European Space Agency's Photos Of Smiley Face Salt Deposits On Mars Hint At Ancient Oceans And Life?

NASA’s Viking 1, the first spacecraft to land on Mars safely, set in motion a riddle yet to be answered. The question is there proof of life on Mars? Of all the planets in our solar system, this one is the only one sufficiently similar to Earth to be explored with instruments similar to ours.

Volcanoes, dried-up lake beds, and other remnants of the planet’s former appearance have been discovered by scientists, but many questions regarding why and how it evolved now linger. Now, scientists are expressing their curiosity over a salt deposit on the Martian crust that resembles a smiling face.

The European Space Agency (ESA) shared the picture on its Instagram handle writing, “Why so serious? Once a world of rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans, Mars now reveals its secrets through chloride salt deposits found by our ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.”

The space agency went on to explain that these deposits — the remains of extinct bodies of water — may point to once-habitable regions from billions of years ago. New information on the climate and possibility of previous life on Mars has been provided by the finding of about a thousand possible sites.

The agency said, “Explore the Martian landscape in this carousel.”

In the comments section, a user wrote, “If there are salt deposits that means oceans.”

Another user said, “Mars the comedian.”

“That’s so beautiful”, said another.

The surface of Mars is extremely unfavourable for life in the contemporary sense of the term due to damaging factors that include extreme cold, radiation, hyper-arid conditions and the like.

However, science has produced many proven examples that life continues to persist in some of the severest conditions on the earth as in cold dry soils in the Dry Valley of Antarctica or the hyper-arid region of the Atacama desert in Chile.

As long as there is liquid water available anywhere on Earth then there is life, and given the evidence of oceans that may have existed in the past on Mars, there are many who speculate as to whether there ever was life on Mars, and if there was then is it still.