Mars hides a hidden ocean deep within its rocky crust
In short: By listening to the planet's internal vibrations, scientists discovered a massive reservoir of liquid water buried miles underground. This finding suggests that enough water could be trapped in the Martian crust to cover the entire planet in a shallow sea.
The InSight lander, which arrived at Elysium Planitia in November 2018, was designed to act as a planetary stethoscope. By placing a seismometer (SEIS) directly on the surface, NASA aimed to capture 'marsquakes' and meteorite impacts to create 3D models of the planet's interior. This mission was critical because Mars is large enough to have undergone the same early accretion and internal heating as Earth, but small enough to have preserved a more accessible historical record of those processes.
In August 2024, a new analysis of four years of seismic data revealed a startling geological feature: a reservoir of liquid water located 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 km) deep within the rocky outer crust. This water is not a surface lake but is trapped in tiny cracks and pores of the rock. Calculations indicate that this subterranean liquid could blanket the whole Martian exterior at a thickness of 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).
Beyond water, InSight provided groundbreaking data on the Martian core, estimating its size to be between 1,810 and 1,860 km. This is about half the size of Earth's core and significantly smaller than previous estimates, suggesting a core composed of lighter elements. The mission also helped identify a radioactive magma ocean beneath the crust and provided a three- to tenfold increase in accuracy regarding mantle viscosity and crust thickness, fundamentally changing our understanding of how terrestrial planets evolve.
Despite its success, the mission faced significant environmental hurdles. Dust accumulation on its solar panels reduced power generation to just one-tenth of its arrival capacity by May 2022. While the lander was eventually put into a low-power mode to conserve heat, its data remains a cornerstone for planetary science, offering a glimpse into the differentiation processes that shaped the rocky inner Solar System over four billion years ago.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: InSight
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