DISTRIBUTION AND HABITABILITY OF (META)STABLE BRINES ON PRESENT-DAY MARS.

ABSTRACT: Special Regions on Mars are defined as environments able to host liquid water that meets certain temperature and water activity requirements that allow known terrestrial organisms to replicate^1,2, and therefore could be habitable. Such regions would be a concern for planetary protection policies owing to the potential for forward contamination (biological contamination from Earth). Pure liquid water is unstable on the Martian surface^3,4, but brines may be present^3,5. Experimental work has shown that brines persist beyond their predicted stability region, leading to metastable liquids^8-10. Here we show that (meta)stable brines can form and persist from the equator to high latitudes on the surface of Mars for a few percent of the year for up to six

SUBMITTER: Rivera-Valentin EG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7745847 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature