• Through analysis of seismic data, scientists have determined that there may be water in the mid-crust of Mars.
• Unfortunately this water is up to 20km below the surface, meaning it’s likely inaccessible.
• The findings help explain what happened to the water that once existed on Mars.

Water is the basis for life on a planet. Of course there are other factors, but generally speaking, where there is liquid water, there is most likely life. As such, scientists have been in search of water on other planets and Moons in our solar system.

So far, the best humanity has been able to find is ice, but now, scientists reckon there may be vast amount of liquid within Mars.

In the report Liquid water in the Martian mid-crust published in PNAS this week, Vashan Wright, Matthias Morzfeld, and Micheal Manga outline why they believe our planetary neighbour is hiding a watery secret. The analysis of the data was led by Wright, a geophysicist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Using seismic data collected by NASA’s InSight rover – which helped determine Mars has a molten core – the trio discovered that there may be groundwater between 11.5 and 20km below the Martian surface.

This conclusion was drawn after the seismic data was fed into a model based on the mathematical theory of rock physics. Using that model it was determine that thin fractures in the mid-crust of the planet is saturated with liquid. This means that it’s likely that Mars didn’t lose all of its liquid to the cosmos and instead, some of it seeped deep into the planet. At one point, Mars was home to oceans, but those disappeared some three billion years ago.

Now, to be frank, water at 11.5 – 20km below the surface isn’t all that helpful as drilling to that distance is already tough here on Earth. The deepest humans have ever drilled is 12.2km and no other drilling operation comes close to that depth. That means that we likely wouldn’t be able to use this water

The good news is that if the water is indeed liquid at this depth, as the scientists believe, there is potential for life to exist in the mid-crust. What that life would look like without sunlight though is unclear.

If humans intend to colonise Mars, insights into the history of the planet such as these will go a long way to making it more viable to extend humanity’s influence within the cosmos.