Mars may have had liquid water more recently than thought, Chinese rover study suggests

Minerals found by rover likely formed from rock interaction with salty groundwater, study says

China’s Zhurong Mars rover has found evidence that the Red Planet may have had liquid water hundreds of millions of years more recently than previously thought.

While previous research has suggested Mars was wet about 3 billion years ago and then lost its water, the new study, published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, suggests the Red Planet may have had water activity just 700 million years ago.

Although studies have suggested ancient Mars was a wet and habitable planet, the most recent epoch of Mars’s geologic history, Amazonian, is often thought to be cold and dry.