China's Mars Rover Uncovers Evidence of Liquid Water on Red Planet's Surface
China's Zhurong rover has found evidence of recent water activity on Mars, with cracked layers on tiny Martian dunes suggesting the Red Planet was a salt-rich watery world as recently as 400,000 years ago. The rover explored four nearby crescent-shaped dunes in the Utopia Planitia region, which are coated with thin, ubiquitously fractured crusts and ridges that formed thanks to melting small pockets of "modern water" sometime between 1.4 million years to 400,000 years ago. The latest findings from analyzing images and data sent home by Zhurong and its Tianwen 1 orbiter companion show that appreciable amounts of water from the planet's icy polar regions wafted to lower latitudes a few million years ago, settling atop the Utopia Planitia dunes.