While it’s long been thought that Jupiter’s moon Europa is hiding a vast ocean of water under its Icy surfaces, new research is asking whether the same can be said for our sister planet, Mars.
According to findings released on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on seismic measurements from NASA’s Mars InSight lander, there may be a layer of water seven to 12 miles under the Martian crust.
The InSight lander, shut down two years ago, detected more than 1,300 marsquakes while roaming the planet, giving researchers a plethora of seismic measurements that may help them map the internal structure of Mars.
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Leading the research is Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He shared that understanding what happened to the water on Mars could be crucial for uncovering more about the planet.
“Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface, and interior,” Wright said in a statement. “A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there.”
The study shared that if the water is under the surface of Mars, it likely seeped from the rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans that once existed on its surface.
However, while many have theorized that finding water on other planets may also mean finding life, Wright says that this may not be the case for Mars.
“Instead, our findings mean that there are environments that could possibly be habitable,” he said in an email to the Associated Press.
Wright and his team worked with InSight’s readings and computer models to determine that underground water was the most likely explanation.
Based on the location of InSight, at Elysium Planitia near Mars’ equator, Wright says that the underground water could be enough to fill a global ocean at a depth of about a mile.
However, to find out if the proposed underground ocean is correct, drills and other equipment would need to be sent to Mars.
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