A lake of liquid water surrounded by smaller ponds may be buried under 1400 metres of ice near the south pole of Mars. Radar observations had already suggested聽that there may be a lake, but new measurements have provided more evidence of its existence and may have found even more liquid water nearby.
The European Space Agency鈥檚 Mars Express spacecraft has been orbiting the planet since 2003. Elena Pettinelli at Roma Tre University in Italy and her colleagues used the craft鈥檚 radar instrument to examine Mars鈥檚 underground structure. Once they had the raw data, they applied criteria that were used to look for buried lakes in Greenland to examine an area called Ultima Scopuli near the Red Planet鈥檚 south pole.
The researchers spotted a liquid lake measuring about 20-by-30 kilometres, along with at least three smaller ponds that are each a few kilometres across. The resolution of the radar measurements wasn鈥檛 high enough to discern how deep any of these bodies of water are, so they couldn鈥檛 determine how much water is there.
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鈥淚t was probably originally a larger, wet area, and this is the remnant of that in smaller ponds,鈥� says Pettinelli. For the water to remain liquid at the cold temperatures of the Martian poles, she and her colleagues suggest that it is probably a salty brine.
It is unclear whether this water is too salty and toxic to support life. 鈥淭here are bacteria that can live in very awkward situations,鈥� says Pettinelli. 鈥淚n Antarctica, they found bacteria living happily in the water of the underground lakes and between the crystals of the ice, and Antarctica is our closest analogue to Mars.鈥� The planet鈥檚 lake and ponds are buried too deep to go and check with the technology we have now, but we may eventually be able to dig deep enough to examine that water more thoroughly, she says.
Nature Astronomy
