The data came from China’s Zhurong rover, which landed on the Red Planet on May 14, 2021, and lasted about one year before becoming inoperable. The data from Zhurong, however, suggest Mars once had oceans and beaches similar to those found on Earth, according to a recent study.

The Chinese rover, the country’s first surface venture beyond the Earth’s moon, landed on the southern ridge of Utopia Planitia, a large northern plain that is a candidate for having held oceans of water, and imaged the region with subsurface radar. Looking at the sloping of the sediments, scientists came to the conclusion that Mars once had “onshore sediments [leading] into a large body of water.”