The killer space rocks struck the African country back in 1911, when two meteorites hit the land. The Nakhlite meteorites contain evidence of water on Mars from millions of years ago. As reported by Inverse, scientists were able to prove an asteroid impact melted parts of the layer of ice beneath he surface of Mars.
Luke Daly of the University of Glasgow explained the study “shows quite handily that you can generate pockets of liquid water through asteroid impacts on the red planet.
“This means you could get short or long-lived reservoirs of liquid water all over the planet throughout the history of Mars.”
NASA is set to visit Mars next year.
Scientists have looked at evidence of water on the planet to see if the planet could have hosted life or still can.
Evidence suggests ancient lakes may have existed on the Mars surface.
Mr Daly wanted to explore if the rocks were lava flows are sills, a layer that separates sedimentary rock from volcanic lava.
He explained: “It turns out answering that is much harder than I thought it had any right to be, but along the way we got this result which is way cooler.
The team have been able to roughly pinpoint where on Mars the asteroids, which became meteorites, came from: “So we’re looking for an area on the surface of Mars that is around 1.4 billion years old with two craters next to each other, one that is 633 million years old and another that is 11 million years old.”
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The landscape was considered a good substitute for the surface of Mars.
Adam Deslauriers of Canada’s Mission Control Space Services said: “It’s a very good analogue for Mars exploration and learning how to drive Mars rovers.
“The rovers that we have on Mars and the Moon would be a lot more sensitive to the environment and conditions of Iceland.”
Ryan Ewing of the Texas A&M University said: “The mineralogy in Iceland is very similar to what we would find on Mars.
“In addition to that, we don’t have much vegetation, it’s cold and we have some of the environments like sand dunes and rivers and glaciers that Mars has evidence of in the past.”
Mission Control is believed to want to return to Iceland before the mission is launched new year.
In 1911, Egypt was a de facto protectorate of the British Empire.
It was legally part of the Ottoman Empire but occupied by Britain from 1882.
The meteorites hit near the village of El Nakhla El Bahariya giving them their name of Nakhla meteorites, they hit Earth in one piece but fragmented into two on impact.