Underground Lake Found on Mars? Get the Facts.
The 12-mile-wide reservoir could solve a Martian mystery—and offer a new target in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
Liquid water is refreshingly abundant on moons in the outer solar system, but it has proven surprisingly tough to find in reliable quantities on Mars—until now.
Radar scans of the red planet suggest that a stable reservoir of salty, liquid water measuring some 12 miles across lies nearly a mile beneath the planet’s south pole. What’s more, the underground lake is not likely to be alone.
“There are other areas that seem to be similar. There’s no reason to say this is the only one,” says Elena Pettinelli of Italy’s Roma Tre University, a coauthor of the paper reporting the discovery today in the journal Science.
If confirmed, the buried pocket of water could answer a few questions
