Is it really water on Mars? NASA just revealed something very shocking

The search for water on this red planet has a long history. In the recent development, NASA’s Insight lander has revealed some surprising aspects of water on Mars. 

As the new data comes, The scientific understanding of the Red Planet floats around and keeps shifting to the questions, of how wet, for how long was water on the surface, and what happened to it.

Now, let’s come to the point, The data from the InSight lander has revealed that there is little or no ice within the first 300 meters beneath the lander. 

The second surprising revelation is that the concentration of water-derived minerals in the crust is lower than expected, deepening the mystery of what exactly happened to all the water that was once on the surface of Mars.

Geo-physicist Vashan Wright published in a research paper, “We find that Mars’ crust is weak and porous. The sediments are not well-cemented. And there’s no ice or not much ice filling the pore spaces. These findings don’t preclude that there could be grains of ice or small balls of ice that are not cementing other minerals together. The question is how likely is ice to be present in that form?.”

Michael Manga, co-author of the research paper says “If you put water in contact with rocks, you produce a brand-new set of minerals, like clay, so the water’s not a liquid. It’s part of the mineral structure. There is some cement, but the rocks are not full of cement.”

According to the research paper, It is possible that the water was used up by minerals that do not form cement. However, an uncemented subsurface reduces the possibility of preserving the science of past life. The lack of cementation indicates a scarcity of water at the landing site of the InSight mission. The temperatures in the region are below freezing, which means that any water would be in the form of ice. Planetary scientists had long suspected the Martian subsurface to be rich in water, which has now been demonstrated as untrue. 

Geophysicist scientists also hope that understanding the amount and location of ice and other minerals on Mars’ surface will help determine whether Mars supports life. In addition, it will reveal the history of its climatic and geological systems and help further prepare for human exploration.