14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, evidence has been mounting that the Red Planet once featured flowing water on its surface, as well as a large ocean in its northern hemisphere. Now, a new study shows that reservoirs of liquid water may exist right beneath the surface.
The international science group that conducted the investigation says that these reserves may lie as little as tens of meters underneath the dusty surface of Mars. The research group was led by experts with the Planetary Science Institute.
In order to arrive at these conclusions, the team looked at collapse patterns affecting terrain in the largest canyons and channels of our neighboring planet. The main research scientist on the work was PSI expert J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez.
In past studies, planetary scientists and geologists investigated larger collapse zones on Mars, located where channels begin their meandering. They concluded that aquifer systems must underlie these areas.
This means that a vast network of reserves was located underneath the channels, but at crustal depths of several kilometers. But those large collapse areas were produced under exceptional hydrogeologic conditions, and are therefore very rare.
The new investigation was conducted with the purpose of determining how groundwater is distributed in the planet's crust at areas other than the previously-studied ones. Scientists now argue that groundwater reservoirs in the upper planetary crust may have been common.
Rodriguez and his team published the conclusions of their investigation in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Icarus, SpaceRef reports.
Aquifers may have developed at such shallow depths due to a natural process in which unconsolidated sedimentary deposits on the surface of permafrost layer melted ground ice underneath.
This phenomenon lead to the development of water-soaking aquifers right beneath the crust, rather than at great depths. If insulating fine-grained sedimentary deposits still exist on Mars, then so to may liquid water reserves.
The experts say that such reservoirs could be found some 120 meters underneath sediments, rather than kilometers, as previous studies had suggested.
If this turns out to be true, then the implications for the future of manned space exploration could be tremendous. Access to water directly from the surface of Mars would reduce the costs of a mission there substantially.
The PSI investigators and their collaborators received funds from the American space agency for the research, under the terms of the NASA Mars Data Analysis Program.