Data from Mars probe "InSight" Mars hides a lot of water in its depths
Mars once had a lot of water - but this has mysteriously disappeared. Now a study points to rich underground deposits. This would be extremely important for one question in particular.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Large water reservoirs lie dormant 10 to 20 meters below the surface of Mars.
- However, the water is hidden in pores and cracks in the rock and is therefore difficult to extract.
- The water could support microbial life.
On Mars, the rock layers at a depth of 10 to 20 kilometers contain so much water that there would be enough for an ocean one to two kilometers deep on the entire planet. A team led by Vashan Wright from the University of California in San Diego discovered the underground water reservoir while analyzing data from the Mars probe "InSight".
"Over three billion years ago, there were large quantities of liquid water on the surface of Mars," explain Wright and his colleagues in the "Proceedings" of the US National Academy of Sciences ("PNAS"). Numerous traces of river courses, lakes and a large ocean bear witness to this in images from Mars probes.
Where this water has remained after Mars has almost completely lost its atmosphere is still unclear. One assumption is that a large proportion of the water could have seeped into the subsurface. To investigate this suspicion, Wright and his colleagues re-analyzed the data from "InSight" and compared it with various models for water-bearing rock layers.
The Mars probe equipped with a seismometer - a device for measuring ground vibrations - took a look inside the Red Planet from 2018 to 2022. This is because the propagation of vibrations in Martian rock caused by Marsquakes or meteorite impacts provides researchers with detailed insights into the planet's internal structure.
The water would hardly be usable for Mars colonists
After the analysis, the researchers came to the conclusion that the data can best be explained by a water-containing layer of magmatic rock at a depth of 10 to 20 kilometers. However, this water would hardly be usable for future Mars colonists - firstly because of the great depth and secondly because the water is hidden in pores and cracks in the rock and is therefore difficult to extract.
Nevertheless, such a layer would be significant: on Earth, microbes can still be found even at great depths in the rock. "Water is necessary for life as we know it," emphasizes Wright's colleague Michael Manga.
He continues: "It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that the water-bearing rock layers on Mars could also provide a habitable environment for microbes." The team therefore sees these layers in the depths of the Martian soil as a priority target for the search for microbial life on our neighboring planet.
