'Significant amounts' of water detected below Mars' surface in 'amazing first step'

16 December 2021, 19:46 | Updated: 16 December 2021, 21:46

“Significant amounts” of water have been identified underneath the "Grand Canyon" of Mars.

The discovery, announced by the European Space Agency (ESA), was hailed as an “amazing first step” as previous research missions have only been able to hunt for near-surface water.

The ESA said it “helps our search for habitable environments [and] possible signs of past life” on Mars.

The water was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a research instrument which has been orbiting Mars since 2016.

It found hydrogen, a measure of water content, in the uppermost metre of soil within the planet’s huge canyon system, Valles Marineris. This, scientists said, provides evidence of a huge volume of water below the surface.

Igor Mitrofanov, the lead author of a new study into the discovery, said: “With TGO we can look down to one metre below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on below Mars’ surface – and, crucially, locate water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments.

“Assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40 per cent of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water.”

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The water-rich area is about the size of the Netherlands, the ESA said.

Water has been known to exist on Mars, with most of it in the form of ice in the planet’s polar regions.

And co-author Alexey Malakhov said the “new” water is also likely to be in the form of ice. The ESA said it may lie “up to a few kilometres below the ground”.