Europe's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft spotted a possible signal of hydrogen chloride gas leaking from rifts in the region of Alba Mons, the largest volcano on Mars in terms of surface area. (Mars' famous Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in terms of height.) Scientists interpret this gas as emissions from hot magma below the regolith of Mars.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances Wednesday (Nov. 4), is not the first to suggest that magma may be flowing on Mars; NASA's InSight lander interpreted its presence through seismic observations and modeling earlier this year. But the new findings are the strongest evidence yet of gases being released by dormant volcanoes on Mars, first study author Alexander Trokhimovskiy, at Russia's Space Research Institute, told Live Science.
Europe smelt it — but what dealt it?
TGO first detected hydrogen chloride gas in Mars' atmosphere in 2021, but scientists were hesitant to link it to volcanic activity. The gas appeared to be seasonal, its distribution was not localized at a possible volcanic region, and other signs of volcanic gases, like sulfur, were not present, study co-author Kevin Olson, a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford who studies Mars gases, told Live Science in a separate email.
A photo of Mars with the Tharsis region centered. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)"I managed to catch two observations from the start of northern winter in the first Mars year of our mission, and a single observation the next year," Olson said, adding that a year on Mars is closer to two years on Earth due to the planet's wider orbit. "These out-of-season measurements were close to one another in location and time in both years, which was rather surprising. We then set about creating a campaign of special, targeted measurements at this time and place."
The scientists confirmed the unseasonal observations in the northern hemisphere, finding a "distinct and pronounced signal" that then diminishes and falls below the spacecraft's detection threshold. "This inconsistency is more suggestive of a puff of gas entering the atmosphere than of regular atmospheric chemistry," he said. "While the link remains a hypothesis, we have now seen this gas appear locally, and nowhere else, over four Mars years of observations."
Related storiesDaniel Mège, also a co-author of the paper and a professor who studies planetary geology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, identified the fissures where the gas may be emerging. He said the complementary evidence from InSight (on the ground) and TGO (circling above) helps give the study weight: InSight spotted activity in the crust, while TGO detected the emissions in the atmosphere.
"If these requirements are met at local scale, at the scale of the seepage structures, then living organisms might wait for us to discover them," he told Live Science in an email. "But maintaining stable conditions over such a long period at a very local scale is not obvious."
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