Closer to finding life on Mars? Huge amount of water discovered at great depths

NASA’s Insight lander and data collected on Mars confirm that there is water beneath its surface (NASA/ Infobae infographics)

The surface of the planet Mars has unequivocal signs of the abundant presence of water that ran in rivers, that formed deltas and that ended in oceans. But where did the water go? Did it evaporate when its atmosphere collapsed? Today, all that is visible is the permafrost ice at the planet’s poles.

Science has been seeking answers to these questions for centuries. But new studies based on data provided by a robot from NASA who worked on Mars, could begin to provide clear answers to these questions.

Although it is believed that Some of the water was lost in space As the planetary atmosphere collapses, research has suggested that that is not the whole story and that The water could have been incorporated into minerals, buried as ice or even exist in liquid form deep within the planet’s crust.

Satellite maps of Mars show traces of water that flowed millions of years ago (NASA/USGS)

Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego They say their calculations suggest that large amounts of liquid water may be trapped within rocks about 11 to 20 kilometers beneath the Martian surface.

“Our estimate of liquid water is larger than the volumes of water proposed to have filled possible ancient Martian oceans. Understanding the water cycle on Mars is essential to understanding the evolution of the climate, both on the surface and in the interior. A useful starting point is to identify where the water is and how much there is,” said Dr. Vashan Wright, co-author of the study from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography belonging to the university and published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wright and his colleagues They performed calculations based on Mars gravity data and measurements recorded by the lander InSight from NASA. The latter reveal how the speed of seismic waves (created by earthquakes on Mars and meteorite impacts) change with depth within the Red Planet’s crust.

NASA’s InSight lander spent several years on Mars analyzing seismic waves in the planet’s interior (REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)

“A midcrust whose rocks are cracked and filled with liquid water better explains the seismic and gravity data we have collected,” Wright said.

Thus, using seismic activity to explore the interior of Mars through NASA’s robotgeophysicists have found evidence of a large underground reserve of liquid water, enough to fill the oceans on the surface of the planet. The data analysed allow scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater found could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometres.

“On Earth, groundwater infiltrated from the surface and we believe this process occurred on Mars. The infiltration must have occurred during a time when the upper crust was warmer than today,” said the expert geologist and added that although the results They do not rule out the possibility that water has also been lost in space or has been left trapped in minerals, “the work allowed scientists to reassess the relative contributions of these different mechanisms to past Martian surface water loss.”

The structure of Feòrachas found by NASA’s Perseverance rover also shows elements that had been clearly influenced by water (NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS)

Wright, along with his colleagues Michael Manga of UC Berkeley and Matthias Morzfeld of Scripps Oceanography They used a mathematical model of rock physics, identical to models used on Earth to map underground aquifers and oil fields. They concluded that Insight’s seismic data are best explained by a deep layer of fractured igneous rock saturated with liquid water. Igneous rocks are cooled, hot magma, such as the granite of the Sierra Nevada in the U.S.

“Establishing that there is a large reservoir of liquid water allows us to get an idea of ​​what the climate was or could be like. And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why the underground reservoir couldn’t be a habitable environment.“We’re not doing this yet,” said Manga, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

“It is true that this is the case on Earth, where very deep mines harbor life, and the ocean floor harbors life. We have not found any evidence of life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that, in principle, should be able to support life“added Manga, who was Wright’s postdoctoral advisor.

These craters were formed by a meteoroid impact on Mars on Sept. 5, 2021, the first detected by NASA’s InSight. Taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this color-enhanced image highlights dust and soil disturbed by the impact in blue to make details more visible to the human eye. (Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Manga noted that there is plenty of evidence of water on Mars, such as river channels, deltas and lake deposits, which support the hypothesis that there was once water on the planet’s surface, but That wet period ended more than 3 billion years ago, after Mars lost its atmosphere..

“The presence of water does not mean there is life, but water is thought to be an important ingredient for life. We know that life can exist deep underground on Earth, where there is water. The middle crust of Mars at least contains a key ingredient for habitability and life as we know it,” Wright said.

Bethany Ehlmann, Professor of planetary sciences at the Keck Institute for Space Studieswho was not involved in the work, said a definitive measurement was now needed to show whether or not there is deep liquid water on Mars and, if so, exactly where it is.On Earth, where there is liquid water, there is life, so if there are now liquid water aquifers on Mars, they are a prime target in the search for life.“, he added.

A view of InSight’s seismometer on the Martian surface, in one of the last images taken by NASA’s InSight Mars lander in December 2022. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via REUTERS)

The doctor Jon Wadeof the Oxford Universitysaid he would not be surprised if there was life on Mars. “Early in its history, Mars would have been as conducive to simple life as Earth, if not more so,” he said. Steven Banham, of the Imperial College Londonhe added that identifying liquid water in the middle crust would also help geophysicists and geologists understand the internal structure of Mars and how it behaves.

However, Banham raised doubts that water could provide a resource for manned missions to Mars. “The amount of water in the Earth’s crust is potentially enormous, but it will be difficult to access or use. It may not make a big difference to human exploration, at least at first,” he said.

NASA sent the Insight lander to Mars in 2018 to investigate the Red Planet’s crust, mantle, core and atmosphere. The robot recorded invaluable information about the interior of Mars before the mission ends in 2022.

By analyzing all the seismic data that Insight collected, it was able to determine the thickness of the crust, the depth of the core, the composition of the core, and even a little about the temperature within the mantle. Insight detected magnitude 5.0 Mars earthquakes and meteorite impacts, all of which produced seismic waves which allowed geophysicists to explore its interior and learn more about the heart of our cosmic neighbor.