By Gerry Doyle
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A study released on Monday using data from NASA’s Mars InSight probe shows evidence of liquid water far below the surface of the fourth planet, advancing the search for life there and showing what may have happened to the ancient oceans from Mars.
The probe, which has been on the Red Planet since 2018, measured seismic data over four years, examining how earthquakes shook the ground and determining what materials or substances were beneath the surface.
Based on this data, the researchers discovered that there was likely liquid water deep within the probe. Water is considered essential for life and geological studies show that the planet’s surface had lakes, rivers and oceans more than 3 billion years ago.
“On Earth, what we know is that where there is enough moisture and there are enough energy sources, there is microbial life very deep underground,” said one of the authors, Vashan Wright, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Diego. . “The ingredients for life as we know it exist in the Martian subsurface if these interpretations are correct.”
The study found that large reservoirs of liquid water in fractures 11.5 kilometers (7.15 miles) 20 km below the surface best explain InSight’s measurements.
He notes that the predicted volume of liquid water below the surface is “greater than the volumes of water proposed to fill the hypothetical ancient Martian oceans.”
“On Earth, groundwater seeped from the surface” deep underground, Wright said. “We expect this process to have also occurred on Mars, when the upper crust was hotter than it is today.”
There is no way to directly study water so deep below the surface of Mars, but the authors said the results “have implications for understanding the Mars water cycle, determining the fate of past surface waters, searching for past or existing life, and evaluating in situ resource utilization for future missions.”
The study, whose other authors are Matthias Morzfeld, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Michael Manga, from the University of California Berkeley, was published the week of August 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“I’m inspired and I hope the audience is inspired too,” Wright said. “Humans can work together to put instruments on a planet… and try to understand what’s going on there.”
(This story has been refiled to correct a typo in the title)
(Reporting by Gerry Doyle; Editing by Michael Perry)
