Discovery of an ocean containing liquid water useful for life in the interior of Mars in an amazing discovery

SINGAPORE – A study published Monday using data from NASA's InSight probe has found evidence of liquid water far beneath the surface of the fourth planet, bolstering the search for life there and revealing what may have happened to Mars' ancient oceans.

The spacecraft, which has been on the Red Planet since 2018, has measured seismic data for four years, examining how the ground shakes during earthquakes and identifying materials or components beneath the surface.

Based on this data, the researchers found that liquid water was likely present deep underground beneath the rover. Water is essential for life, and geological studies show that the planet's surface contained lakes, rivers and oceans more than 3 billion years ago.

“What we know on Earth is that places where there is enough moisture and enough energy, there is microbial life deep in the Earth’s interior,” said study co-author Vashan Wright of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. “If these explanations are correct, then the ingredients for life as we know it are present in the interior of Mars.”

The study found that the presence of large reservoirs of liquid water in cracks ranging from 11.5 kilometers (7.15 miles) to 20 kilometers below the surface best explains InSight's measurements.

The study suggests that the volume of liquid water expected beneath the surface is “larger than the volumes of water that are thought to have filled the ancient Martian oceans.”

“On Earth, groundwater seeped from the surface” deep into the Earth, Wright said. “We expect this process to have happened on Mars as well when the upper crust was much warmer than it is today.”

There is no way to directly study water so deep below the surface of Mars, but the authors said the findings “have implications for understanding the water cycle on Mars, determining the fate of past surface water, searching for past or present life, and evaluating in-situ resource use for future missions.”

The study, also co-authored by Mathias Mortzfeld of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley, was published the week of August 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“I was inspired by this idea and I hope the public will be inspired by this idea as well,” Wright said. “Humans can work together to put instruments on a planet… and try to understand what’s going on there.”