Mars May Have Water Hidden in an Underground Ocean; See What a New Study Says

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Radio Bamba Editorial

| August 14, 2024

Mars may be saturated with water beneath its surface, with enough water hidden in cracks in underground rocks to form a global ocean, a new study suggests.

The findings, released this week, are based on seismic measurements from NASA’s Mars InSight lander, which detected more than 1,300 Martian quakes before it was shut down two years ago.

This water — thought to lie between 11.5 and 20 kilometers deep in the Martian crust — likely seeped from the surface billions of years ago, when Mars was home to rivers, lakes and possibly oceans, said lead scientist Vashan Wright of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Just because Mars has water doesn’t mean it supports life, Wright said. “Rather, our findings mean there are environments that could be habitable,” he said in an email.

His team combined computer models with InSight readings, including the speed of earthquakes, to determine that groundwater was the most likely explanation. The results were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If InSight’s location on Elysium Planitia, near Mars’ equator, is representative of the rest of the Red Planet, Wright said, the groundwater would be enough to fill a global ocean about a mile (1 kilometer to 2 kilometers) deep.

Other drills and equipment will be needed to confirm the presence of water and look for possible signs of microbial life.

Although the InSight lander is no longer operational, scientists continue to analyze data collected from 2018 to 2022, looking for more information about the interior of Mars.

Mars is thought to have been almost entirely wet for more than 3 billion years, losing its surface water as its atmosphere dwindled, turning the planet into the dry, dusty world we know today. Scientists believe much of this ancient water escaped into space or remained buried underground.