Silica on a Mars Volcano Tells of Wet and Cozy Past

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NEWS RELEASE: 2010-361 October 31, 2010

SILICA ON A MARS VOLCANO TELLS OF WET AND COZY PAST

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-361&cid=release_2010-361

PASADENA, Calif. -- Light-colored mounds of a mineral deposited on a volcanic cone more
than three billion years ago may preserve evidence of one of the most recent habitable
microenvironments on Mars.

Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enabled researchers to identify the
mineral as hydrated silica and to see its volcanic context. The mounds' composition and their
location on the flanks of a volcanic cone provide the best evidence yet found on Mars for an
intact deposit from a hydrothermal environment -- a steam fumarole, or hot spring. Such
environments may have provided habitats for some of Earth's earliest life forms.

"The heat and water required to create this deposit probably made this a habitable zone," said
J.R. Skok of Brown University, Providence, R.I., lead author of a paper about these findings
published online today by Nature Geoscience. "If life did exist there, this would be a promising
type of deposit to entomb evidence of it -- a microbial mortuary."

No studies have yet determined whether Mars has ever supported life. The new results add to
accumulating evidence that, at some times and in some places, Mars has had favorable
environments for microbial life. This specific place would have been habitable when most of
Mars was already dry and cold. Concentrations of hydrated silica have been identified on Mars
previously, including a nearly pure patch found by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in
2007. However, none of those earlier findings were in such an intact setting as this one, and the
setting adds evidence about the origin.

Skok said, "You have spectacular context for this deposit. It's right on the flank of a volcano.
The setting remains essentially the same as it was when the silica was deposited."

The small cone rises about 100 meters (100 yards) from the floor of a shallow bowl named Nili
Patera. The patera, which is the floor of a volcanic caldera, spans about 50 kilometers (30 miles)
in the Syrtis Major volcanic region of equatorial Mars. Before the cone formed, free-flowing lava
blanketed nearby plains. The collapse of an underground magma chamber from which lava had
emanated created the bowl. Subsequent lava flows, still with a runny texture, coated the floor of
Nili Patera. The cone grew from even later flows, apparently after evolution of the underground
magma had thickened its texture so that the erupted lava would mound up.

"We can read a series of chapters in this history book and know that the cone grew from the last
gasp of a giant volcanic system," said John Mustard, Skok's thesis advisor at Brown and a co-
author of the paper. "The cooling and solidification of most of the magma concentrated its silica
and water content."

Observations by cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed patches of bright deposits
near the summit of the cone, fanning down its flank, and on flatter ground in the vicinity. The
Brown researchers partnered with Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md., to analyze the bright exposures with the Compact Reconnaissance
Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on the orbiter.

Silica can be dissolved, transported and concentrated by hot water or steam. Hydrated silica
identified by the spectrometer in uphill locations -- confirmed by stereo imaging -- indicates that
hot springs or fumaroles fed by underground heating created these deposits. Silica deposits
around hydrothermal vents in Iceland are among the best parallels on Earth.

Murchie said, "The habitable zone would have been within and alongside the conduits carrying
the heated water." The volcanic activity that built the cone in Nili Patera appears to have
happened more recently than the 3.7-billion-year or greater age of Mars' potentially habitable
early wet environments recorded in clay minerals identified from orbit.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA. Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory provided and operates CRISM, one of six instruments on the orbiter. For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

-end-

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Richard Lewis 401-863-3766
Brown University, Providence, R.I.
richard_lewis@brown.edu

Geoffrey Brown 240-228-5618
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu

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