50,000-year-old meteorite provides evidence of water on Mars

Washington: NASA scientists have found evidence of past water movement in a Martian meteorite that fell in Antarctica about 50,000 years ago, lending weight to the theory that Mars might have once supported life.

In a new study, scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston focused on structures deep within a 13.7 kilogramme Martian meteorite known as Yamato 000593 (Y000593).

The team reported that newly discovered structures and compositional features within the larger Yamato meteorite suggest biological processes might have been at work on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.

"While robotic missions to Mars continue to shed light on the planet's history, the only samples from Mars available for study on Earth are Martian meteorites," said lead author, Lauren White, based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Analyses found that the rock was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow on Mars. Around 12 million years ago, an impact occurred on Mars which ejected the meteorite from the surface of Mars.

The meteorite travelled through space until it fell in Antarctica about 50,000 years ago and was found on the Yamato Glacier by Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2000.