http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0228/c90000-20283125.html

Post based on Global Times of Feb. 28, 2025 Photo shows map of Utopia Planitia, Zhurong Mars rover landing site, and four possible ancient shorelines. (Photo/Courtesy of the Aerospace Information Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Researchers at the CAS Aerospace Information Research Institute have discovered multi-layered tilted sedimentary structures beneath the surface of the Mars rover Zhurong’s landing area in the northern hemisphere of Mars, which are the geological features highly similar to coastal sediments on Earth, providing the most direct underground evidence to date of the existence of an ancient ocean in Mars’ mid-latitude regions.

Zhurong is equipped with the Mars Subsurface Penetrating Radar, developed to detect underground structures and potential water ice. The rover’s route was located approximately 280 kilometers north of the previously proposed ancient ocean shoreline, with an altitude about 500 meters lower than that shoreline.

If an ocean once existed in this region, large amounts of water could have been stored underground as ice due to climate changes, providing potential water resources for future Mars bases and greatly reducing the costs of building and maintaining those bases. These ancient ocean sediments preserve a historical record of Mars’ climate changes, and studying them can help us understand how Mars transitioned from a warm and wet climate to its current cold and dry state. This, in turn, can guide human efforts to terraform Mars and achieve long-term sustainable habitation on the planet.