A Habitable Fluvio-Lacustrine Environment at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars

J. P. Grotzinger (1) , D. Y. Sumner (2) , L. C. Kah (3) , K. Stack (4) , S. Gupta (5) , L. Edgar (6) , D. Rubin (7) , K. Lewis (8) , J. Schieber (9) , N. Mangold (10) , R. Milliken (11) , P. G. Conrad (12) , D. Desmarais (13) , J. Farmer (6) , K. Siebach (1) , F. Calef (14) , J. Hurowitz (15) , S. M. Mclennan (16) , D. Ming (17) , D. Vaniman (18) , J. Crisp , A. Vasavada (14) , K. S. Edgett , M. Malin , D. Blake (13) , R. Gellert (19) , P. Mahaffy (12) , R. C. Wiens (20) , S. Maurice (21) , J. A. Grant (22) , Shelby Wilson , R. C. Anderson (23) , L. Beegle (14) , R. Arvidson , B. Hallet (24) , R. S. Sletten (24) , M. Rice (1) , J. Bell (6) , J. Griffes (1) , B. Ehlmann (1, 14) , R. B. Anderson (23) , T. F. Bristow (13) , W. E. Dietrich (2) , G. Dromart (25) , J. Eigenbrode (12) , A. Fraeman , C. Hardgrove , K. Herkenhoff (23) , L. Jandura (14) , G. Kocurek (26) , S. Lee (14) , L. A. Leshin (27) , R. Leveille (28) , D. Limonadi (14) , J. Maki (14) , S. Mccloskey (14) , M. Meyer (29) , M. Minitti (6) , H. Newsom (30) , D. Oehler (17) , A. Okon (14) , M. Palucis (2) , T. Parker (14) , S. Rowland (31) , M. Schmidt (32) , S. Squyres (33) , A. Steele (34) , E. Stolper (1) , R. Summons (35) , A. Treiman (36) , R. Williams (18) , A. Yingst (18) , C. Fabre (37)

1 Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences [Pasadena]
2 EPS - Department of Earth and Planetary Science [UC Berkeley]
3 The University of Tennessee [Knoxville]
4 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
5 Department of Earth Science and Technology [Imperial College London]
6 SESE - ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration
7 US Geological Survey [Santa Cruz]
8 Princeton University
9 Department of Geological Sciences [Bloomington]
10 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique [UMR 6112]
11 Department of Geological Sciences [Providence]
12 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
13 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
14 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
15 Department of Geosciences [Stony Brook]
16 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]
17 JSC - NASA Johnson Space Center
18 PSI - Planetary Science Institute [Tucson]
19 Department of Physics [Guelph]
20 ISR-2 - Space Remote Sensing Group
21 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
22 CEPS - Center for Earth and Planetary Studies [Washington]
23 USGS - United States Geological Survey [Reston]
24 Department of Earth and Space Sciences [Seattle]
25 LGL-TPE - Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon - Terre, Planètes, Environnement
26 Department of Geological Sciences [Austin]
27 RPI - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
28 CSA - Canadian Space Agency
29 NASA Headquarters
30 IOM - Institute of Meteoritics [Albuquerque]
31 University of Hawaii
32 Brock University [Canada]
33 Cornell University [New York]
34 Geophysical Laboratory [Carnegie Institution]
35 MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
36 LPI - Lunar and Planetary Institute [Houston]
37 GeoRessources

The Curiosity rover discovered fine-grained sedimentary rocks, which are inferred to represent an ancient lake and preserve evidence of an environment that would have been suited to support a martian biosphere founded on chemolithoautotrophy. This aqueous environment was characterized by neutral pH, low salinity, and variable redox states of both iron and sulfur species. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, and phosphorus were measured directly as key biogenic elements; by inference, phosphorus is assumed to have been available. The environment probably had a minimum duration of hundreds to tens of thousands of years. These results highlight the biological viability of fluvial-lacustrine environments in the post-Noachian history of Mars.

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre

J. P. Grotzinger, D. Y. Sumner, L. C. Kah, K. Stack, S. Gupta, et al.. A Habitable Fluvio-Lacustrine Environment at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars. Science, 2014, 343 (6169), ⟨10.1126/science.1242777⟩. ⟨hal-01293840⟩