By 
August 13th, 2024
Cutaway view of Mars InSight lander and data it collected.
Image credit: James Tuttle Keane and Aaron Rodriquez
Data collected by NASA’s InSight Mars lander keeps on revealing the inner secrets of the Red Planet.
While InSight’s mission ended in 2022, data relayed by the lander during its four-year mission suggests the presence of liquid water in the Red Planet’s crust.
The Mars lander gathered information from the ground directly beneath it such as the speed of Marsquake waves that, in turn, enable scientists to deduce what substances reside subsurface.
This image shows InSight’s domed Wind and Thermal Shield, which covers the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) seismometer.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Statistical inference
Rock physics models and Bayesian inversion (a method of statistical inference) were used to identify combinations of lithology, liquid water saturation, porosity, and pore shape.
That data is consistent with a mid-crust on Mars composed of fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water at roughly 7 miles (11.5 kilometers) to 12 miles (20 kilometers) depth.
Best evidence to date
The analysis, led by Vashan Wright, a geophysicist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “provides the best evidence to date that the planet still has liquid water in addition to that frozen at its poles,” according to a media statement.
Wright is a geophysicist who studies tectonics, paleoclimate, paleoseismicity, and earthquake-triggered hazards such as landslides, submarine slides, and tsunamis.
Along with Wright, study authors are Matthias Morzfeld from Scripps Oceanography and Michael Manga from the University of California Berkeley.
Mars beckons. Human explorers can maximize the science output for unraveling the complex nature of the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
Implications for past or extant life
“While available data are best explained by a water-saturated mid-crust, our results highlight the value of geophysical measurements and better constraints on the mineralogy and composition of Mars’ crust,” the research team reports.
“Our results have implications for understanding Mars’ water cycle, determining the fates of past surface water, searching for past or extant life, and assessing in situ resource utilization for future missions,” the researchers point out in their paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Habitable environment
“Establishing that there is a big reservoir of liquid water provides some window into what the climate was like or could be like,” said Manga, a UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science in a statement.
“And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why [the underground reservoir] is not a habitable environment. It’s certainly true on Earth — deep, deep mines host life, the bottom of the ocean hosts life. We haven’t found any evidence for life on Mars, but at least we have identified a place that should, in principle, be able to sustain life.”
To access the paper – “Liquid water in the Martian mid-crust” – go to:
Posted in Space News
