NASA InSight Lander Sparks Excitement At Hidden Water World On Mars

A group of researchers have concluded the most probable explanation concerning data collected about Mars’ planetary crust from the Mars InSight Lander is the crust has stores of liquid water. If true, the group believes it sets the stage for new research considering the planet’s habitability and continuing a search for life that exists on a place other than Earth.

Many will be venturing outside tonight to view the convergence of Mars and Jupiter in the night sky. As they gaze upon the celestial event, some may wonder if humans will ever inhabit the Red Planet one day. As space organizations such as NASA and SpaceX plan out how to make that happen, scientists and engineers work tirelessly trying to find ways to overcome the most obvious obstacles that future astronauts would run into once they stepped onto the Martian surface.

Resources will be extremely limited, with water being the most vital. So, studies such as the one conducted by lead author Vashan Wright, assistant professor and geophysicist at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, concerning the possibility of Mars harboring water beneath its crust could be key to future survival on the Red Planet, as well as unlocking the Red Planet’s past.


“Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface, and interior,” Wright said. “A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there.”

According to a press release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Wright’s team used data InSight collected during its four-year mission, which ended in 2022. During its mission, the lander collected information from the ground directly beneath it on variables such as the speed of Marsquake waves, from which scientists can infer what substances may reside beneath the surface. The team fed the data into a model informed by a mathematical theory of rock physics. The results from the model led the researchers to determine that liquid water in the crust was the most plausible explanation for explaining the data.

“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 authors wrote in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study coauthor Michael Manga, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, noted that establishing there is a “big reservoir” of water beneath the surface of Mars provides a bit of a window into what the climate was like or could be like.

Manga added, “And water is necessary for life as we know it. I don’t see why (the underground reservoir) is not a habitable environment.” He noted, “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.”

Wright points out that being able to drill a hole a mile or deeper on Earth is a challenge, and doing so on Mars, where there is currently no infrastructure or energy, would require a massive amount of resources brought to Mars to drill to such depths.

Wright and others are hopeful future missions to Mars will include more seismometers. While InSight’s one seismometer collected crucial data, being able to have a network of them spread across Mars could reveal variations within the planet’s interior and provide a greater insight into its diverse and complex history, according to Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission.