A water ocean was found on Mars

More than three billion years ago, the surface of Mars was periodically flooded with liquid water. Where these streams went remains a mystery. Perhaps they evaporated, were captured by minerals, penetrated into subsurface horizons or were preserved in the form of ice sheets. To find out, American scientists used data from the InSight lander and modeled the properties of the rocks that make up the Martian crust.

In November 2018, a NASA module reached the Elysium plains of Mars The inside . It had everything it needed for subsurface exploration: a SEIS seismometer, an HP3 probe to measure heat flow, and a RISE antenna to estimate the planet’s rotation rate and axial wobble. During its four-year mission, the robotic geologist collected enough information to overturn our understanding of the Red Planet’s interior.

Seismic measurements helped scientists from the University of California at San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Berkeley (USA), led by Vashan Wright, find the missing water on Mars. According to calculations, it is accumulated in fractured igneous rocks at depths of 11.5 to 20 km. If it were on the surface, there is enough ocean to be one or two kilometers thick. A paper on this has been published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Landing device InSight obtained values ​​of lateral and longitudinal velocities seismic waves (etc And Vice President), the bulk density of rocks beneath the ground, including the middle part of the Martian crust. It is the name of one of the four subsoil areas that are clearly visible according to geophysical data. The temperature on the planet allows the existence of liquid water near the beginning of the middle crust, and the pores in its lower part are closed.

The authors applied statistical methods and algorithms (Bayesian inversion and Markov chain Monte Carlo) to select the six combinations of rock parameters that most closely matched the seismic observations, as has been done to find water- and oil-bearing horizons on Earth. The calculations showed that these were likely to be igneous rocks with thin cracks filled with water.

The underground reservoir is a source of water for future settlements on Mars. It is also a new object of study for astrobiologists searching for traces of extraterrestrial life. The problem is how to get there. Ultra-deep drilling into the Earth is technically very difficult and impossible beyond its borders. All that remains is to conduct research and hypothesize about the geological history of the Red Planet.

“Knowledge of the water cycle on Mars is key to understanding the evolution of the Martian climate, surface, and subsurface. It would be useful to first understand where the water is and how much of it there is,” said Vashan Wright.

According to Berkeley’s Michael Mang, water is a necessary condition for life as we know it. “Why don’t we live in an underground tank on Mars like we do on Earth? Our life is at the bottom of the oceans, in very deep mines. There’s no trace of it on Mars yet, but we now know where it could be in principle,” the planetary scientist explained.

There are many indicators of changing water activity on the planet, with riverbeds, deltas, lake sediments, rock flows. More than three billion years ago, Mars lost a significant portion of its atmosphere and could no longer hold large amounts of moisture on its surface. Scientists have sent many instruments to the planet to find out where it is going and whether life is still there or not.

The new study shows that water is not lost into space but seeps underground into the central part of the Martian crust — and that’s much more than what the ancient Martian oceans hypothesis suggests.