image: This is NASA InSight's first full selfie on Mars. It displays the lander's solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. The selfie was taken on Dec. 6, 2018 (sol 10). The selfie is made up of 11 images which were taken by its Instrument Deployment Camera, located on the elbow of its robotic arm. Those images are then stitched together into a mosaic. JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Data about Mars’ planetary crust gathered from the Mars InSight lander are best explained by the conclusion that the crust has stores of liquid water.
Analysis led by Vashan Wright, a geophysicist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, provides the best evidence to date that the planet still has liquid water in addition to that frozen at its poles. If that conclusion is true, it sets the stage for new research considering the planet’s habitability and continuing a search for life that exists on a place other than Earth. The potential presence of liquid water on Mars has tantalized scientists for decades. Water is essential for a habitable planet.
“Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface, and interior,” Wright said. “A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there.”
The study appears the week of Aug. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the National Science Foundation and the US Office of Naval Research supported the work. Besides Wright, study authors are Matthias Morzfeld from Scripps Oceanography and Michael Manga from the University of California Berkeley.
Wright’s team used data that InSight collected during a four-year mission ending in 2022. The lander collected information from the ground directly beneath it on variables such as the speed of Marsquake waves from which scientists can infer what substances reside beneath the surface. The data were fed into a model informed by a mathematical theory of rock physics. From it, the researchers determined that the presence of liquid water in the crust most plausibly explained the data.
“While available data are best explained by a water-saturated mid-crust, our results highlight the value of geophysical measurements and better constraints on the mineralogy and composition of Mars’ crust,” the authors wrote.
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article Title
Liquid Water in the Martian Mid-Crust
Article Publication Date
12-Aug-2024
COI Statement
Authors declare no competing interests