Researchers recently found a possible reservoir of liquid water more than 11 kilometres below Mars’s surface – the latest in a long series of potential water discoveries on the Red Planet, hinting at its temperate past
By Leah Crane
13 August 2024
Martian water may be lurking beneath – or even above – the planet’s surface
NASA/JPL/USGS
Mars isn’t as arid as it may seem. Billions of years ago, the surface of the Red Planet rippled with oceans and rivers of liquid water, but now it seems that all of that fluid has disappeared, leaving behind a dusty wasteland. However, as we have explored the planet with orbiters, landers, rovers and even telescope images from afar, traces of water keep popping up.
Each hint tantalises researchers because of how crucial water is for living organisms and how helpful it could be for future exploration. Water has now been discovered all over Mars, in many different forms – here are five places it has been spotted.
1. Buried underground
The InSight lander, visualised here, recently found another potential water reservoir on Mars NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Just beneath Mars’s parched surface lies a wonderland of water ice. These deposits are kept insulated by the layers of dust on top of them, but erosion and meteorite impacts can expose them to the prying eyes of our orbiters. A single ice deposit recently identified using data from the Mars Express orbiter seems to contain enough water to cover the entire surface of Mars in an ocean 1.5 to 2.7 metres deep.
It isn’t just ice buried under the shifting orange sands. Hints of a huge lake beneath the planet’s south pole have been controversial – it may simply be wet silt or volcanic rock. But a new study using data from the InSight lander has revealed another possible reservoir of water near the planet’s equator. InSight found this water buried 11.5 to 20 kilometres underground by feeling for marsquakes and measuring how fast those seismic waves travelled. This revealed that the rocks those quakes were propagating through seemed to be saturated with water.
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