SAN FRANCISCO, iNews.id – billion years ago Mars has a lot of liquid water on its surface and may even have looked like Earth. But now that the planet is dry and arid, there is hardly any accessible liquid water.
However, a recent study has revealed a lot of water beneath the Martian surface, in the Valles Marineris canyon system. The water was spotted by the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter using its FREND (Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector).
Previous research has found water ice on Mars, especially around the poles and beneath its surface, with little water being easily accessible in the middle latitudes. Hence why this discovery is so important.
“With TGO, we can look down to a meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on beneath the Martian surface — and, most importantly, find water-rich ‘oases’ that could not be detected with previous instruments,” said Igor Mitrofanov, lead author of the new study, said in a statement.
FREND, says Igor, reveals an area of unusually large amounts of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound to water molecules, as much as 40 percent of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
