ISTANBUL

In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have discovered a massive underground water reservoir on Mars, potentially enough to fill oceans on the planet's surface. 

This discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, reveals that water is trapped in tiny cracks and pores under the Martian crust, which lies 7 to 12 miles beneath the surface.

Lead study author Vashan Wright, a geophysicist at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, emphasized the significance of the discovery in a statement: "Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface, and interior. A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there."

The researchers used seismic data from NASA’s InSight lander, which operated from 2018 to 2022, to identify water-rich layers in the planet’s deep crust.

Speaking to the BBC, Michael Manga, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, discussed the implications of this discovery for the potential habitability of Mars.

"Establishing that there is a big reservoir of liquid water provides some window into what the climate was like or could be like," Manga said.

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

The presence of liquid water miles beneath Mars' surface offers new insights into the planet’s geological history and hints at the possibility that life could exist in these subsurface aquifers.

According to CNN, Alberto Fairen, a planetary scientist at Cornell University, also remarked: "These new results demonstrate that liquid water does exist in the Martian subsurface today, not in the form of discrete and isolated lakes, but as liquid water-saturated sediments, or aquifers."

While the discovery opens up exciting possibilities for future exploration, accessing the water poses significant challenges.

Furthermore, Wright explained that drilling to such depths on Mars would necessitate unprecedented resources and technology: "Even drilling holes just half a mile or deeper on Earth is a challenge that requires energy and infrastructure, so a massive number of resources would need to be brought to Mars to drill to such depths."

This discovery is a significant step forward in understanding Mars' past, present, and potential for supporting life, paving the way for future missions to investigate the mysteries hidden beneath the Red Planet's surface.