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(CNN Spanish) - Thanks to the most recent missions done on Mars, the knowledge we have today of Mars has reached astonishing revelations of the intimacy of the red planet. These are some.
1. Snoring?
NASA has managed to capture the strange sounds heard on Mars. Thanks to the seismometer of the Insight probe - which landed on Mars in November 2018, but it was until April that we caught its strange sounds - the vibrations of the red planet could be heard. Seismic activity can provide an inner image of a planet and how it has formed.
2. Methane
In June of this year, CNN learned that the Curiosity rover detected 21 parts per billion units of methane by volume, or ppbv. That means that of the volume of air on Mars that is being evaluated one billionth of the volume of air is methane, NASA said. This is interesting because on Earth, microbial life is a key source of methane. However, this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that there is life on Mars, because the interactions between rocks and water can also create methane, and Mars has water and a lot of rocks.
MIRA: Since when does NASA have signs of life on Mars?
3. Clay
In August of this year, CNN learned that the Curiosity rover made findings in the same Gale crater related to clay in the bed of that ancient lake. During the summer, Curiosity went through a “stone parking lot” and captured a panorama of the Teal Ridge and Strathdon outcrop, a rock composed of layers of wavy sediments that could have been sculpted by wind, water or both. "We are seeing an evolution in the ancient lake environment recorded in these rocks," said Valerie Fox, co-leader of the clay campaign at the California Institute of Technology. “It was not just a static lake. It is helping us move from a simplistic view of Mars from wet to dry. Instead of a linear process, the history of water was more complicated. ”
4. Get out
This year the NASA Curiosity rover found sediments containing sulfate salt in the crater, suggesting that it once had salty lakes in the Gale crater, a bed of an ancient lake with a mountain in the center. These salts, according to the researchers, are evidence of the evaporation of the crater lake in the arid environment of the red planet. They also believe that studying younger rocks in the future could shed more light on how the Martian surface dried up.
LOOK: NASA captures strange sounds on Mars
5. "Star Trek"
CNN learned in June this year that NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of a strange mound on the Martian surface that resembles the Starfleet symbol of Star Trek, the space exploration organization, diplomacy, research , defense and maintenance of peace. The image is a natural mound on the surface of Mars, which may have occurred due to an eruption that launched lava around sand dunes, but without covering them.
6. Sunrises and sunsets
NASA's InSight used the camera on its robotic arm to take photos on April 24 and 25, capturing the sunrise at the equivalent of 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. local time. Another camera also examined clouds in the sky during sunset.
LOOK: NASA: getting closer to finding life on Mars
7. A past with “simple life?
CNN learned in August this year that 3,000 or 4,000 million years ago, Mars could have been warm enough to house storms of rain and running water, which would have created an environment that could support a simple life.
8. We are not ready for life on Mars
The NASA Mars 2020 rover, which will be launched next summer, will be the first to collect samples of Martian material to send back to Earth. If scientists discover that there was once life, or there is life, on the red planet, can people handle such an extraterrestrial concept? NASA chief scientist Jim Green thinks not. "What happens next is a completely new set of scientific questions," he said. “Is that life like us? How are we related?
READ: There could have been life on Mars when it was warm and rainy, before winter came
9. Experiments of the 70s found life on Mars, says former NASA investigator
Gilbert V. Levin, who was a principal investigator in a NASA experiment that sent the unmanned Viking missions to Mars in 1976, recently published an article in Scientific American in which he argues that the positive results of the experiment were proof of life. On the red planet. In the experiment, Viking probes put nutrients in the soil samples of Mars; if there were life, it would consume food and leave gaseous traces of its metabolism, which radioactive monitors would detect. To ensure that it was a biological reaction, the test was repeated after altering the soil, which would be lethal to known life. If there were a measurable reaction in the first and not in the second sample, that would suggest functioning biological forces, and that is exactly what happened, according to Levin.
10. “Cookies and Cream”
In September of this year, CNN met an image of Mars, taken by the orbiter Roscosmos ExoMars and the European Space Agency, in which its surface looks like a cookie with cream. This provocative image is a product of winter at the poles of the red planet, which causes carbon dioxide ice to cover the dunes in a thin layer. In spring, this layer immediately transforms from ice to steam and defrosting occurs from the bottom of the dune and rises.
MarsNASA