NASA: ‘Oceans of Liquid Water’ May Be Hiding Under Mars’ Surface

A huge reservoir of liquid water, enough to cover the entire planet Mars to a depth of 1-2 kilometers, appears to be hiding deep within the planet, according to data from NASA’s first extraterrestrial seismometer.

Measurements by the stationary InSight spacecraft, which have helped geologists determine the planet’s interior structure, suggest that water is trapped within cracks in igneous rock 11 to 20 kilometers below the barren surface.

Conditions at this depth may allow microbial life forms to survive today, the researchers report in the journal National Academy of Sciences.

This water is a remnant of a young Mars that was much warmer than it is today and had lakes, rivers and seas. Some of this water seeped into the Earth, reaching great depths — as it does on Earth — before the planet turned into a frozen desert about 3 billion years ago.

Today it is known that water exists only in the form of ice underground and at the poles.

At the depths where the new deposit is expected to be found, “the crust is hot enough for water to remain liquid,” said Vasan Wright, a planetary scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study. “At a lower depth, there would be ice.”

The stationary InSight spacecraft has been listening to Mars for four years. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“On Earth, we find microbial life even at great depths where the rocks are saturated with water and there is an energy source,” added planetary scientist Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the research team.

InSight landed on Mars in 2018 to study its interior structure, from its liquid metal core to its mantle and crust. The mission ended in 2022.

“InSight can measure the speed of seismic waves and how they change with depth. The speed of seismic waves depends on the composition of the rocks, whether there are cracks and what the cracks are filled with,” Wright said.

“We combined seismic wave velocity measurements with gravity rock physics model measurements,” he noted. “These are the same models used to estimate the properties of aquifers or to map oil and gas fields.”

He said the best explanation for the readings was the presence of liquid water in deep cracks.

The measurements are only for the area where InSight was, but “if its location is representative and you can remove water from the cracks, we estimate it will fill an ocean 1-2 kilometers deep globally.

There is no doubt that the presence of a large reservoir of liquid water would be a valuable natural resource for future human missions to Mars, but the depth at which the water is studied is prohibitively expensive in practical terms.