There is mounting evidence that Mars was once wet and sloshy, covered in lakes and oceans that lapped at shorelines and left behind sediments that are currently being examined by robots rolling across the now-dusty and dry surface.

There was water. We are certain that it was. It’s a little more difficult to piece together where it went, when it happened, and how. There was liquid water on Mars less than a billion years ago, according to a meteorite that was blasted from the planet 11 million years ago and then traveled to Earth. This is a significant clue, though.

A recent study of the Lafayette Meteorite has revealed that minerals in it were produced 742 million years ago when water was present. It indicates that Mars may occasionally still be somewhat damp and represents a significant advancement in the dating of water minerals on the planet.

“Dating these minerals can therefore tell us when there was liquid water at or near the surface of Mars in the planet’s geologic past,” explains Marissa Tremblay, a geochemist from Purdue University in the United States.

“We dated these minerals in the Martian meteorite Lafayette and found that they formed 742 million years ago. We do not think there was abundant liquid water on the surface of Mars at this time. Instead, we think the water came from the melting of nearby subsurface ice called permafrost, and that the permafrost melting was caused by magmatic activity that still occurs periodically on Mars to the present day.”

Among the materials under concern is iddingsite, a kind of rock that is created when volcanic basalt is exposed to liquid water. Iddingsite, which is found in the Lafayette Meteorite, coincidentally has argon inclusions in it.

Although it can be a little challenging, dating minerals has become considerably easier as technology has advanced. For argon isotopes, a method known as radiometric dating can be applied to get an exact record of the element’s formation time. Although potassium decays radioactively to produce argon, a single sample of the isotope argon-40 can nevertheless be dated in the absence of potassium.

This is because the amount of potassium that was previously there determines how much of the lighter isotope argon-39 is produced when argon-40 is bombarded in a nuclear reactor. Because potassium decays at a predictable pace, scientists can determine how long it has been since the rock formed by using the argon-39 that is created as a stand-in for potassium.

To determine how long it had been since water and rock had combined to form iddingsite, the researchers applied this method to a tiny sample of the Lafayette meteorite.

Rocks can potentially be altered by being expelled from Mars after an impact event, speeding through the Solar System, and then colliding with Earth through its atmosphere while being heated throughout the descent. The temperature variations that the meteorite encountered during its lengthy voyage were modeled and taken into consideration by the researchers, who were also able to ascertain whether or not they would have affected the sample’s apparent age.

“The [estimated] age could have been affected by the impact that ejected the Lafayette Meteorite from Mars, the heating Lafayette experienced during the 11 million years it was floating out in space, or the heating Lafayette experienced when it fell to Earth and burned up a little bit in Earth’s atmosphere,” Tremblay explains.

“But we were able to demonstrate that none of these things affected the age of aqueous alteration in Lafayette.”

New limitations on the known date of wetness on Mars are imposed by the findings. The study also discovered that the new date aligns with a time when Mars’s volcanic activity is at its highest. Though recent measurements by the Mars InSight lander have shown that there is a lot more going on inside the planet than its naive appearance suggests, such activity seems considerably quieter currently.

However, the findings are not limited to how we perceive Mars. The team’s methods could help us better grasp the Solar System and the long-standing, contentious issue of how Earth obtained its water billions of years ago.

“We have demonstrated a robust way to date alteration minerals in meteorites that can be applied to other meteorites and planetary bodies to understand when liquid water might have been present,” explains Tremblay.

For NASA’s possible use, Lunar Outpost has chosen SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to transport the Artemis lunar rover it is developing to the moon.

The Denver-based business revealed on November 21 that it has reached a deal with SpaceX to use Starship to deliver the company’s Lunar Outpost Eagle rover to the moon. Neither the launch date nor any other details of the agreement were disclosed by the companies.

In April, NASA awarded contracts to Lunar Outpost and three other firms for the first phase of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) program, which will help construct a rover for future Artemis missions. Each business was given a one-year contract to complete a preliminary design review (PDR) of their rovers. The government will then choose at least one of the companies to continue developing the rover.

Delivering the rover to the moon is the responsibility of the firms under the LTV program, which is set up as a services contract. When NASA no longer needs those rovers, those businesses will be allowed to use them for commercial purposes.

In an interview, Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus stated that the company chose SpaceX after receiving “great responses” from a number of businesses. He stated, “The reason we chose Starship is their technological maturation, the pace at which they move and the quality of that organization “It’s a vehicle that we think will be able to provide reliable landing on the lunar surface, and we know that they can get it done on the timelines we need.”

Although he did not reveal other vehicles his business investigated alongside Starship, Lunar Outpost developed the rover to be compatible with as many conceivable landing mechanisms as possible. “We need this vehicle to be compatible with multiple different lander providers, so that way we have the optionality, that way we have flexibility, and we can evaluate technical progress over time just to make sure we can derisk our commercial case.”

The team working on the rover is led by Lunar Outpost and consists of Leidos, MDA Space, Goodyear, and General Motors. After Lunar Outpost failed to reach a consensus regarding Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the project, Leidos took over as one of the partners on the “Lunar Dawn” team in September.

NASA astronauts recently drove a rover prototype for human factors testing as part of that team’s busy work to improve the rover’s design. Cyrus stated, “We learned what the astronauts really like and what we can improve upon,” 

In roughly six months, the contract’s first phase will come to an end with a PDR. In order to create the rover and acquire services for the following phase, NASA will then ask Lunar Outpost and the other two grantees, Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab, to submit ideas.

Although Cyrus and other industry professionals are urging NASA to select multiple companies to provide redundancy, as the agency has done in other services programs like the Human Landing System, NASA officials have stated that budget constraints mean they are likely to select only one company for that next phase.

“NASA should pick two. Dissimilar redundancy for something this critical, I think, is the right choice,” he stated.

On November 13, Lunar Outpost revealed that it had raised a Series A round, but Cyrus stated that the business would not reveal the size due to competitive considerations. He said that the money would be used to develop the Lunar Outpost Eagle.

Citing commercial interest from potential clients, he noted that the company intends to continue working on the rover even if it is not chosen for the next stage of NASA’s LTV program. Regarding the funding, he stated, “This allows us to accelerate those plans pretty drastically,” “So, no matter what we’re going to be flying this vehicle on Starship.”

As part of its Artemis program, NASA is collaborating with American businesses to create the human landing devices that will securely transport humans from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back.

NASA is collaborating with SpaceX to build the company’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis III, the first crewed lunar landing in more than 50 years. In lunar orbit, Starship HLS would dock with NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Two Artemis crew members will then transition from Orion to Starship and descend to the surface, according to recently revised artist’s conceptual renders. Before returning in Starship to Orion, which is waiting in lunar orbit, the astronauts will gather samples, conduct scientific experiments, and examine the Moon’s environment there. SpaceX will conduct an uncrewed landing demonstration mission on the Moon before the crewed Artemis III mission.

In order to achieve a more comprehensive set of requirements for Artemis IV, NASA is also collaborating with SpaceX to further the development of the company’s Starship lander. These specifications include docking with the agency’s Gateway lunar space station for human transfers and putting greater mass on the moon.

In the artist’s idea, SpaceX’s Starship HLS is shown completing a braking burn before landing on the Moon, with two Raptor engines blazing. In order to lower the lander’s velocity before its final drop to the lunar surface, the burn will take place once Starship HLS leaves low lunar orbit.

NASA will learn how to live and work away from home, explore more of the Moon than ever before, and get ready for future human exploration of Mars with Artemis. NASA’s deep space exploration is built on its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, exploration ground systems, and Orion spacecraft, as well as its human landing system, next-generation spacesuits, Gateway lunar space station, and upcoming rovers.