Salty water on Mars could have enough oxygen to support life

Doyle Rice USA TODAY

Published 3:25 PM EDT Oct 22, 2018

Mars continues to slowly give up its secrets.

If briny water exists just below the Martian surface, it has the potential to hold enough oxygen molecules to support life, a new study reports.

The theoretical life might be simple animals like sponges, or perhaps tiny oxygen-breathing microbes.

"Oxygen is a key ingredient when determining the habitability of an environment, but it is relatively scarce on Mars," said Woody Fischer, a Caltech geobiologist, in a statement.

Researchers discovered that, at low elevations and at low temperatures, an unexpectedly high amount of oxygen could exist in Martian water – well above the threshold needed for oxygen-breathing life in Earth's oceans today.

"Nobody ever thought that the concentrations of dissolved oxygen needed for (oxygen-breathing life) could theoretically exist on Mars," said study lead author Vlada Stamenković, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

More: NASA Mars rover discovers ‘building blocks’ for life: 3-billion-year-old organic matter

More: Water detected on Mars, raising the possibility of finding life on Red Planet

The finding challenges the standard scientific view that Mars lacks places where life could evolve. Even if water does exist on Mars – which is not a given yet – researchers had long dismissed the idea that it might contain oxygen, since Mars's atmosphere is about 160 times thinner than that on Earth and is mostly carbon dioxide. But this new study contradicts that theory.

If the oxygen-rich water does exist on Mars, the the concentrations would be "particularly high in polar regions."

This research could help future space missions to Mars, by providing better targets to rovers searching for signs of past or present habitable environments, Stamenković said.

The study was published Monday in Nature Geoscience, a peer-reviewed British journal..

This new study follows up on the announcement earlier this summer that scientists had detected a lake of salty water under the Martian ice. The discovery also raised the possibility of finding life on the Red Planet.

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