Shoreline

Rover Finds the Shoreline of an Ancient Beach on Mars

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Map of Utopia Planitia showing the landing site of the Zhurong rover and four proposed ancient shorelines. The landing site is about 280 kilometers north of and some 500 meters lower in elevation than the northern hypothesized shorelines. In its traverse, Zhurong traveled south from its landing site, toward the ancient shorelines. Courtesy: Hai Liu, Guangzhou University, China

Data from the Chinese rover Zhurong is adding to the pile of evidence for oceans on ancient Mars. For a year, this little craft traveled over nearly two kilometers of the Martian surface and made radar scans of buried natural structures that look like ocean shorelines. Zhurong’s ground-penetrating radar (GPR) looked under the surface to … Read more