Most of the water on Mars might be present hidden under the surface

As per new research, the water on Mars might not have dried up but instead might have been buried beneath the surface of Mars and this research raises significant chances of Mars hosting life for humans.

Previous studies have shown that Mars was once home to enough water to cover its surface with the ocean, and as we have seen on Earth water forms a basic necessity for life to exist, there is a chance that Mars hosted life once.

Scientists earlier thought that as Mars lost its protective magnetic field, solar radiation and the solar winds stripped it of its air and water. But now new research published in Journal Science concludes that water on Mars also experienced geologic entrapment, which means most of its water is stored trapped in the minerals in the planet’s crust.

The research was modeled on the data from the rovers and spacecraft orbiting Mars, also from the meteorites from Mars. The research etimated the amount of water the planet initially had and how much it has lost over time.

One reason for Mars drying up is the water was lost in space but as they found out the rate of evaporation of water does not align with the current studies and observations of the planet.

The study finds that most of the water loss occurred during Mars’ Noachian period between 3.7 billion to 4.1 billion years ago. During that time, the water on Mars could have interacted and fused with minerals in the planet’s crust — in addition to escaping the planet’s atmosphere — locking away as much water as roughly half of the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the things our team realized early in the study is that we needed to pay attention to the evidence from the last 10 to 15 years of Mars exploration in terms of what was going on with our discoveries about the Martian crust and in particular the nature of water in the Martian crust.

Bethany Ehlmann, a co-author on the study

But all this water in the crust does not mean that future astronauts will be able to easily extract it from the surface. Eva Scheller who led the study says that – all in all, there still isn’t a lot of water in the Martian crust, so you would have to heat a lot of rocks to get an appreciable amount of water.

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