China's Zhurong rover has found evidence that water has persisted on Mars much longer than expected, reports CNN.

Zhurong landed on a large plain called Utopia in the northern hemisphere of Mars on May 15, 2021 - the same spot where NASA's Wiking-2 lander landed in 1976.

The main mission of the Chinese rover, which lasted three months, was to look for signs of ancient life.. He studied the minerals, environment, and distribution of water and ice in the plain, which is part of the largest impact crater in the Martian northern lowlands.. The rover continues to collect information and send it to the Tianwen-1 orbiter orbiting the planet..

Data from the rover's initial exploration of the basin suggests that there was water in the Utopia Planitia basin at a time when many scientists thought Mars was dry and cold..

A study detailing the results was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.. Mars was once warm and humid, but billions of years ago, something changed and the planet became the dry, cold desert it is today.. The red planet entered this period in the so-called Amazonian era, which began about 3 billion years ago and continues to this day..

China releases new images of Mars taken by Zhurong rover. “The most important and new thing is that we found hydrogenated minerals at the landing site, and these minerals are the result of interaction with subsurface water,” said Yang Liu, a researcher at the National Space Research Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences..

In particular, the researchers analyzed data from the Zhurong rover on the discovered deposits and minerals.. They identified hydrated silica and sulfates, similar to hydrated minerals found by other missions exploring various regions of the red planet..

The researchers determined that the ground at the landing site of the Zhurong rover is a layer of hard crust. Such a crust can form when a significant amount of water, whether rising groundwater or melting subsurface ice, turns the soil into a hard crust due to evaporation..

The discovery of this layer of hard crust, which is thicker than the hard crust likely formed by atmospheric water vapor detected by other Martian missions, suggests that the Utopia Plain had a more active water cycle tens of millions of years ago than scientists expected..

This adds to the growing body of evidence found by Mars missions that the red planet went through several wet and warm and then dry and cold cycles rather than one abrupt climate change..

According to Yang Liu, these climatic ebbs and flows could be the result of volcanic activity or impacts from other celestial objects..

[see_also ids\u003d"

China becomes the second country to ride a rover on the surface of Mars. The findings came as a surprise to researchers, as previous observations of orbiters did not reveal traces of hydrogenated minerals..

The Utopia Plain is of interest to scientists because some suggest that the region once had an ocean..

“Thus, the discovery of hydrogenated minerals is an important indication of the geological and water history of the region and the evolution of the Martian climate,” said Yang Liu..

He also hopes the rover will be able to analyze the plain's sediments to learn more about the history of water in the region..

The findings already suggest that there may be “significant reserves” of water in hydrated minerals or even under the top layer of soil that future researchers could use during manned missions to Mars..