(DailyEmailNews.com) – In a bombshell Martian discovery, new research indicates that Mars might hold large amounts of water under its surface.
Led by Vashan Wright from the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the study suggests Mars could potentially have enough water to cover its entire surface with an ocean.
Based on data from NASA’s InSight lander, this finding reveals that substantial water reserves could be buried seven to twelve miles beneath the Martian crust.
The water is believed to have originated from Mars’s surface billions of years ago, a time when the planet had rivers, lakes and possibly oceans.
While this does not directly indicate that there is life on Mars, Wright argues that these conditions might support habitable environments.
The team reached this conclusion by employing computer models and analyzing seismic data from over 1,300 marsquakes.
This helped the team deduce that underground water was the most likely explanation.
If the data gathered at the InSight lander’s location in Elysium Planitia is representative of Mars as a whole, these underground reserves could form a global ocean one to two kilometers deep.
Although the InSight mission has ended, the analysis of its collected data from 2018 to 2022 is still ongoing and provides crucial insights into what lies beneath Mars’s surface.
The prospect of accessing these water reserves and searching for signs of microbial life would require advanced drilling technologies, marking a new chapter in Martian exploration.
This endeavor not only seeks to probe deeper into the planet’s geological past but also to explore its potential to support life.
Copyright 2024, DailyEmailNews.com
