Sydney: Australian scientists have uncovered the earliest direct evidence of hot water activity on Mars, offering new insights into the planet's potential for habitability in the past.

A research team from Curtin University in Western Australia, in a study published on Saturday, analyzed a 4.45-billion-year-old zircon grain from the Martian meteorite NWA7034, known as Black Beauty, which was discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2011.

The zircon grain revealed geochemical markers of water-rich fluids, indicating that water was present during the planet’s early magmatic processes.

Aaron Cavosie, a co-author of the study from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, emphasized that the discovery opens fresh avenues to explore Mars' ancient hydrothermal systems and its potential to have supported life.

"Using nano-scale geochemistry, we detected elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago," Cavosie explained. "Hydrothermal systems played a critical role in life’s development on Earth, and our findings suggest that Mars also had water—a vital component for habitability—during its earliest crust formation."

Despite Mars experiencing significant meteorite impacts that reshaped its surface, the research shows that water existed on the planet during the Pre-Noachian period, which occurred more than 4.1 billion years ago.

The study, which included researchers from the University of Adelaide, was led by Jack Gillespie, a former research associate at Curtin now at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.