It turns out there is a lot of liquid water on Mars, but we will never be able to reach it
Water is an essential element for life as we know it. Not only does it keep living things and plants alive, but it is also one of the most important ingredients for the emergence of life. That is why humanity’s efforts to find traces of life on other worlds are closely linked to efforts to find water.
In our solar system, Mars is the main target of these efforts. The fourth planet from the Sun was once very similar to Earth, but lost its magnetic field and atmosphere about four billion years ago and was relegated to the status of a dead planet.
We don’t yet know for sure if there was life of any kind there, but we do know that there was water there. Liquid surface water that could be found in lakes, rivers, and even oceans. About a billion years after the planet’s magnetosphere disappeared, the water disappeared too.
What happened to our planet’s water is not known for sure, but until recently two theories prevailed. One is that most of it turned to ice and was lost in space (a theory supported by the presence of ice at the poles, but does not explain all the water that was thought to have been there), while the other is that it may have been stored in minerals and deep aquifers beneath the surface.
The group’s morale was given a huge boost earlier this week when a team of geophysicists announced a significant discovery – so significant, in fact, that it could change our entire view of the planet and our plans for it.
The discovery was made possible by analyzing data collected over the years by the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander. The device, which is currently inactive after failing while on duty in December 2022, was supposed to study the interior of the planet.
Photo: NASA
The machine landed in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars at the end of 2018 and during the time it was in operation it sent around 6,600 raw images of its surroundings to Earth, registered 1,300 earthquakes and, overall, gave us a view of Mars that we could never have imagined.
The team behind this study of water on Mars included Vashan Wright, assistant professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, Michael Manga of UC Berkeley, and Matthias Morzfeld of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The trio used InSight data on seismic activity filtered through a mathematical model of rock physics. We’re told this is the same kind of math used on our planet to detect and map the presence of underground aquifers and oil fields.
The results suggest that the lander’s discoveries can only be explained by the presence of a deep layer of fractured igneous rock (similar to cooled hot magma, like the granite here on our world) saturated with liquid water.
The team estimates that the underground reservoir of liquid water is huge – if it were on the planet’s surface, it would cover the entire reddish surface to a depth of 1.6 kilometers!
The team estimated the size of the reservoir by assuming that the water-saturated mid-crust just beneath the InSight lander encircles the entire planet. This is the kind of news that gets space enthusiasts excited, and I was no exception. But then I learned that we’ll probably never reach this massive underground water reservoir.
Photo: James Tuttle Keane/Aaron Rodriquez/Scripps Institution of Oceanography
The reservoir is trapped in tiny cracks and pores in the rock at the center of our planet, 11 to 20 kilometers below the surface. That’s a depth we can hardly reach here on Earth with our sophisticated drilling machines: the deepest hole drilled by humans, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 in the Murmansk region of Russia, is 12.2 kilometers deep.
That means the water there will probably never be able to sustain our colonization efforts. But to get back to the starting point: the presence of water is a good indicator of the existence of life. And the team behind this research says they see no reason why the site shouldn’t be a habitable environment and that the reservoir could theoretically sustain life.
The full report of the research, which was supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, is scheduled to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
We expect more people to look into this and give their opinions, but we also look forward to a mission to confirm these findings. None have been announced yet, but if that isn’t worth a coordinated effort, I don’t know what is.
