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New research suggests Mars could have enough water under its surface to form a global ocean.
On Monday, scientists released their findings, which are based on seismic measurements captured from NASA’s Mars InSight rover, which detected over 1,300 marsquakes before shutting down two years ago.
The water is believed to be hiding in the cracks of rocks underground and could be seven to 12 miles beneath the Martian crust.
The water may have seeped from the surface billions of years ago, when the red planet had rivers, lakes and possibly oceans, lead scientist Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography told The Associated Press.
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A view of Mars from NASA’s Mars InSight Lander (NASA/Twitter)
But even though water could be underneath Mars’ crust, it does not necessarily mean it holds life, according to Wright.
“Instead, our findings mean that there are environments that could possibly be habitable,” he told the AP in an email.
Wright’s team used computer models and readings from Insight, including the velocity of the quakes, to determine underground water was the most likely explanation.
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MAVEN Artist’s Concept Orbiting Mars: This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars. (Credits: NASA/GSFC)
The team’s results appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
Wright said if InSight’s location near the planet’s equator is representative of the rest of Mars, there would be enough water underground to fill a global ocean at a depth of about a mile.
Scientists would need to find a way to drill down deep enough into the planet’s crust to confirm the potential of life and the presence of water.
While large volumes of water are believed to have existed on the surface of Mars over 3 billion years ago, scientists hypothesize the water either drained down into the ground or was lost to space.
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The water is also believed to have vanished as the planet’s atmosphere thinned, turning the planet into a dry and dusty world.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.