Revolutionary Discovery: Liquid Water Found in Mars' Mid-Crust
Large volumes of liquid water were transiently present on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago. After Mars lost much of its atmosphere, the surface water was either lost to space or sequestered beneath the surface in minerals, as buried ice, or as deep groundwater. Michael Manga at UC Berkeley, in a study led by Vashan Wright and with Matthias Morzfeld (both at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and both were formerly postdocs at Berkeley), used geophysical measurements recorded by NASA’s InSight lander and statistical and rock physics models to constrain the possible distribution of water in the Martian mid-crust at depths of 11.5 to 20 kilometers beneath the lander. Observations are best explained by an igneous crust with thin fractures filled with liquid water. If the area beneath the InSight lander is a representative location, the Martian mid-crust could contain a volume of liquid water exceeding that of hypothesized ancient oceans. This study has implications for the history of the Martian water cycle, the search for past or extant life on Mars, and the availability of resources for future Mars missions.
Check out the article at the following link!
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2409983121
Find more information about the authors and their research here:
Professor Vashan Wright at UC San Diego: https://vwright.scrippsprofiles.ucsd.edu/
Professor Matthias Morzfeld at UC San Diego: https://igppweb.ucsd.edu/~mmorzfeld/#home
Professor Micheal Manga at UC Berkeley Earth & Planetary Science: https://eps.berkeley.edu/people/michael-manga