Mars scores another victory in the search for extraterrestrial life

The discovery, announced Monday, comes just weeks after NASA’s Perseverance rover drilled into a rock sample on Mars that may contain evidence of microbial life from a bygone era.

The ancient remains of long-extinct alien life are all NASA can hope for on the dry surface of Mars. But any considerable source of liquid water, like these potential underground reservoirs, it’s a place to check for active microbial existence—even if the water 10 miles underground would never see the light of day.

“It’s certainly true on Earth—the deep, deep mines host life, the ocean floor hosts life. We found no evidence for life on Mars, but at least we identified a place that should, in principle, be able to support life,” said Michael Manga, co-author of the study and a planetary scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. Berkeley, in a press release.

Marsquakes helped NASA find hints of water

When NASA put a seismometer on Mars aboard its InSight lander, the goal was to look inside the planet.

Although the InSight mission ended in 2022, scientists are still sifting through all the collected data in hopes of learning something new about the depths of Mars.

The InSight seismometer instrument measured Marsquake activity by mapping seismic waves. As these waves travel through the Martian interior, their timing and the direction in which they travel are influenced by the material through which they travel deep underground.

So by measuring the waves, the scientists in the new study can tell what lies beneath the planet’s surface. It is similar to how the waves of an X-ray or CAT scan can reveal what is inside the human body.

Manga and his colleagues used mathematical modeling to determine that a deep layer of fractured, water-saturated igneous rock best explained the InSight data. Their findings were published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A clue to a Martian mystery

Besides being downright fascinating and potentially overturning humanity’s view of Mars as red, dry, lifeless rock, the new findings may help solve one of the planet’s biggest mysteries: where all the water has gone.

The surface of Mars was once lush with water. Heck, the Perseverance rover is exploring a basin that used to be a giant lake and a river delta.

But the planet did not have a strong magnetic field like Earth’s to help maintain its atmosphere. As a result, solar radiation wore away the protective layer of atmospheric gases that existed and the planet dried up.

About 3 billion years ago, all water was gone. Some of it is still frozen in the ice caps of Mars. Perhaps some simply vaporized in the harsh space environment. But scientists haven’t really figured out where it all went.

The new findings suggest that some of the water seeped deep into the planet’s crust.