Reuters. One of the authors of a study released this week using data from NASA's Mars InSight lander said on Tuesday (August 13) there is evidence of 'vast amount of liquid water' in Mars' deep subsurface.
"Our study findings do not say anything about whether there is or is not life on the planet, " said one of the authors, Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The only thing we can say is that a key ingredient for life as we know it and for habitability exists from 11 to 20 kilometers underground] right now, and is likely existed for billions of years."
The study released Monday (August 12) advances the search for life there and showing what might have happened to Mars' ancient oceans.
The InSight lander, which has been on the Red Planet since 2018, measured seismic data over four years, examining how quakes shook the ground and determining what materials or substances were beneath the surface.
Based on that data, the researchers found liquid water was most likely present deep beneath the lander. Water is considered essential for life, and geological studies show the planet's surface had lakes, rivers and oceans more than 3 billion years ago.
The study found that large reservoirs of liquid water in fractures 11.5 kilometers (7.15 miles) to 20km beneath the surface best explained the InSight measurements.
"We're also learning about a planet that used to look similar to what our planet looks like currently and here we have a model for what happens to water when it leaves the surface after a planet loses its atmosphere," Wright said.
There is no way to directly study water that deep beneath the surface of Mars with Wright saying that drilling to get there would be 'challenging'.
The study, whose other authors are Matthias Morzfeld of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Michael Manga of the University of California Berkeley, was published the week of Aug. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
