This is a perspective rendering of the Martian chloride deposit. Credit: LASP / Brian Hynek
Mars turned cold and dry long ago, but there is evidence of an ancient lake that likely represents some of the last potentially habitable surface water ever to exist here. There is an 18-sq-mile chloride salt deposit (about the size of the city of Boulder) in the planet’s Meridiani region near the Mars Opportunity rover’s landing site. As seen on Earth in locations such as Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, large-scale salt deposits are considered to be evidence of evaporated bodies of water.
Digital terrain mapping and mineralogical analysis of the features surrounding the deposit indicate that this one-time lakebed is no older than 3.6 B years old, well after the time period when Mars is thought to have been warm enough to sustain large amounts of surface water planet-wide and the solar system is believed to have formed 4.6 B years ago.
“This was a long-lived lake, and we were able to put a very good time boundary on its maximum age,” said Brian Hynek of LASP ( Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics). “We can be pretty certain that this is one of the last instances of a sizeable lake on Mars.”
Based on the extent and thickness of the salt, the lake is only ~8% as salty as Earth’s oceans and therefore may have been hospitable to microbial life.
Other factors such as acidity levels were not included in the scope of the study though. http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2015/08/07/salt-flat-indicates-some-last-vestiges-surface-water-mars-cu-boulder-study-finds
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