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Volcanic eruptions are not a major threat to the Martian landscape, but an area about the size of Alaska was potentially covered with lava as recently as one million years ago. The findings are detailed in a study published December 15 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and reveal that the presence of large fissures could have resulted in major flooding events. The reactions from the mixture of lava and water from the floods may have created an environment that could harbor life.
[Related: Giant quake that shook Mars for hours had a surprising source.]
A geologically ‘dead’ planet?
Planet Earth is home to very active plate tectonics and these constantly churning chunks of crust alter our planet’s surface. Mars has long been considered a geologically “dead” planet due to its lack of plate tectonics and volcanic activity has never been observed there. However, some recent discoveries have questioned the notion that Mars was always this way, including evidence that a giant mantle plume underneath the region of Elysium Planitia was once behind intense seismic and volcanic activity in the planet’s relatively recent past. Elysium Planitia has the youngest terrain on the Red Planet, so studying it helps scientists better understand its past, including more hydrological and volcanic events.
In this new study, a team from the University of Arizona and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, combined images taken with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and measurements from ground-penetrating radar to recreate a 3D model of every individual lava flow they could detect evidence of in Elysium Planitia. The survey revealed more than 40 volcanic events in the planet’s recent past. One of the largest flows possibly filled a Martian valley named Athabasca Valles with almost 1,000 cubic miles of basalt.
“Elysium Planitia was volcanically much more active than previously thought and might even still be volcanically alive today,” study co-author and planetary geologist Joana Voigt said in a statement. Voight completed this research as part of her PhD at the University of Arizona and is now postdoctoral researcher at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Marsquakes recorded by NASA’s InSight lander between 2018 and 2022 also provided the team on this study with further proof that the Red Planet is not so dead just below the surface.
“Our study provides the most comprehensive account of geologically recent volcanism on a planet other than Earth,” study co-author and University of Arizona planetary geologist Christopher Hamilton said in a statement. “It is the best estimate of Mars’ young volcanic activity for about the past 120 million years, which corresponds to when the dinosaurs roaming the Earth at their peak to present.”
What steam could mean for finding evidence of life
These study’s findings have implications for future research into whether Mars harbored life at some point in its history. Elysium Planitia has traces of several large floods and the interaction of the outpouring lava with flood water or ice likely shaped the landscape in dramatic ways.