Part 7/14:
For years, Mars has been a prime candidate in the search for past or present life, especially due to the evidence of subsurface lakes detected beneath its polar ice caps. In 2018, ESA’s Mars Express detected bright radar reflections suggestive of liquid water under the southern polar cap, fueling hopes of finding microbial life in Martian lakes analogous to Antarctica’s Lake Vostok.
However, recent research published in Geophysical Research Letters challenges this interpretation. The team posits that the radar reflections could be explained by clay minerals, specifically smectite, which are abundant on Mars. The study indicates that what was thought to be liquid water might instead be highly reflective clay deposits.