On February 7, the world’s oldest submarine cable was discovered on Mars, as a BBC correspondent was filming the planet’s surface.
A crew member from the US company Terra Nova noticed something strange in the Martian soil, and the team decided to investigate.
The team dug a hole, and discovered a copper cable of the same type as the one that carries cables on Earth, which they dubbed ‘the Marius cable’.
The cable is still in place, and is a vital part of Terra Nova’s Mars cable system.
“When we started digging, we didn’t know if we would find a cable, or if we could find any material that was still intact from a different time and place,” said team leader, John Sibboni, from the University of California, Berkeley.
Terra Nova’s Marius Cable is also the oldest cable in the world.
It’s estimated to be 100,000 years old, and it was also used in the construction of the Marius Tower in Sydney, Australia.
It was built in 1592 by the Spanish conquistador Juan de Fátima Navarro, who discovered the region in 1599.
It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Terra Nova says it hopes to be able to mine it soon.
According to Terra Nova, the cable is part of the oldest known terrestrial infrastructure on Mars.
They also say that the Marus cable is one of the longest cables in the planet, and that the cable was first used by the Vikings to sail across the North Sea.
Sibbonis team also discovered that the copper cable is very strong.
And, the team say, the Maruses cable is the oldest in the Solar System, and likely to be in better condition than any other cable on Mars since the Viking era.
If you want to dig on Mars and have the best view, be sure to watch this fascinating footage of Terra Niner.