A new study, conducted by researchers led by theoretical physicist Vlada Stamenkovic, who is an Earth and planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California has found that Mars may be more hospitable to oxygen breathing life than previously thought. It is thought that if life existed in these watery havens then they could resemble life in neighboring Earth

Dr. Stamenkovic, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said: "Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the modern Martian atmosphere, Mars has been assumed to be incapable of producing environments with sufficiently large concentrations to support aerobic respiration. To find out just how much oxygen could be absorbed, Stamenković, Fischer, and their colleagues Michael Mischna at JPL and Lewis Ward (MS '14, PhD '17) at Harvard, did two things: First, they developed a chemical model describing how oxygen dissolves in salty water at temperatures below the freezing point of water.
A new study finds that water on Mars may contain more oxygen than previously thought.