Mars holds enough water to cover the entire planet with an ocean about a mile deep, according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But accessing that water would require drilling wells 6 miles down. On Earth, creating wells that reach even a half mile down is a challenge.
Water was first discovered on Mars in 2020, it was frozen in polar ice caps. But scientists had also noticed signs that much more once flowed on the surface through channels resembling riverbeds. Finding the actual water below the planet’s surface had proved elusive — until a team of researchers turned to data from NASA’s InSight lander. The lander launched in 2018 and used seismic imaging to probe the planet’s mantle, crust, and core.
“The mission greatly exceeded my expectations,” says Michael Manga, a geophysicist at University of California, Berkeley, and one of the paper’s authors.
