Archive for July 25, 2019

Huge reservoir of liquid water detected under the surface of Mars

25 researchers using radar to probe the planet’s polar ice caps have detected a lake of liquid water under the Martian ice.

It stretches 20 kilometers across, they say. The detection was made using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on the Mars Express spacecraft. MARSIS sends radar pulses that penetrate the surface and ice caps of the planet, then measures how the radio waves propagate and reflect back to the spacecraft. Reflections off sub-surface features provide scientists with information about what lies beneath the surface. Read more