‘Massive lake’ discovered on Mars

new york — A huge lake of salty water appears to be buried deep in Mars, raising the possibility of finding life on the red planet.

The discovery, based on observations by a European spacecraft, generated excitement from experts. Water is essential to life as we know it, and scientists have long sought to prove that the liquid is present on Mars.

“If these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars,” said Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas who found signs of an enormous Martian ice deposit in 2016.

Scott Hubbard, a professor of astronautics at Stanford University who served as NASA’s first Mars programme director in 2000, called it “tremendously exciting.”

“Our mantra back then was ‘follow the water.’ That was the one phrase that captured everything,” Hubbard said. “So this discovery, if it stands, is just thrilling because it’s the culmination of that philosophy.”

The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Science, does not determine how deep the reservoir actually is. This means that scientists can’t specify whether it’s an underground pool, an aquifer-like body, or just a layer of sludge.

To find the water, Italian researchers analysed radar signals collected over three years by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. Their results suggest that a 12-mile-wide (20 kilometres) reservoir lies below ice about a mile (1.5 kilometres) thick in an area close to the planet’s south pole. They spent at least two years examining the data to make sure they’d detected water, not ice or another substance.

“I really have no other explanation,” said astrophysicist Roberto Orosei of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna and lead author of the study.

Mars is very cold, but the water might have been kept from freezing by dissolved salts. It’s the same as when you put salt on a road, said Kirsten Siebach, a planetary geologist at Rice University who wasn’t part of the study. —

If these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars.

Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas

AP An artist’s rendering of the Mars Express spacecraft probing the southern hemisphere of Mars. At upper right is the planet’s southern ice cap. The inset image shows the area where radar cross section readings, tilted at 90 degrees, were made. The...