Liquid Water Discovered on Mars

Surface ice near the South Pole - liquid water underneath
(Surface ice near the South Pole – liquid water underneath)
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/MALIN SPACE SCIENCE SYSTEMS

A team from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, using Marsis, a radar instrument on board the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Mars Express orbiter, believe they have discovered a nearly 20km (12 mile) underground liquid water lake on everyone’s favorite backup planet. This is significant for oh so many reasons, and we need to get a probe over there stat and see about what may be swimming around.

The technique for finding this new Mars feature utilized the radar capability of Marsis, and the team realized that reflections from the bottom of a subsurface feature were stronger than reflections from the surface which, in radar terms, is a good sign of liquid H2O.

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