Study reveals Mars likely to have more oxygen to support human life

A group of scientists have through a study revealed that planet Mars is likely to have more oxygen to support human life than earlier thought.

Salty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported.

In some locations, the amount of oxygen available could even keep alive a primitive, multicellular animal such as a sponge, they reported in the journal Nature Geosciences on Monday.

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“We discovered that brines” – water with high concentrations of salt – “on Mars can contain enough oxygen for microbes to breathe,” said lead author Vlada Stamenkovic, a theoretical physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, United States.

“This fully revolutionises our understanding of the potential for life on Mars, today and in the past,” he revealed.

Up to now, it had been assumed that the trace amounts of oxygen on Mars were insufficient to sustain even microbial life.

 

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