A new analysis of seismic data obtained by NASA’s InSight mission to Mars has revealed some big surprises. The first surprise: the first 300 meters of the basement at the landing site near the Martian equator contains only a little ice, reports SciTechDaily.

“We discovered that the crust of Mars is weak and porous. Sediments are poorly cemented. And there is little or no ice filling the pores,” said geophysicist Vasan Wright of the University’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. California San Diego.

Wright and three co-authors published their analysis on August 9, 2022 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“These findings do not rule out the possibility that there could be ice pellets or small balls of ice that are not cemented by other minerals,” Wright said. “The question is, how likely is it that the ice is present in this form?”

The second surprise contradicts the leading theory of what happened to the water on Mars. It is believed that at the beginning of its history, the red planet could have had oceans of water.

Many experts suspected that much of this water became part of the minerals that make up underground cement. Water can also enter minerals that do not act as cement.

However, an uncemented basement eliminates a way to preserve records of life or biological activity, Wright said. Cements, by their very nature, hold rocks and sediments together, protecting them from destructive erosion.

The absence of cemented sediments indicates a lack of water at a depth of 300 meters below the InSight landing site near the equator. The average sub-zero temperature at the Martian equator would be sufficient for water to freeze, if it existed there.

Many scientists have long suspected that the Martian basement is full of ice. Now their theories are dispelled. However, large layers of ice and frozen ice remain at the poles of Mars.

“As scientists, we are now dealing with the best data, with the best observations. And our models predicted that at this latitude there should still be frozen ground with aquifers beneath it,” said Professor Manga and head of the Department of Earth and Earth. Planetary Sciences at UC Berkeley.

In 2018, the InSight spacecraft landed on Elysium Planitia, a flat, smooth plain near the Martian equator. Its instruments included a seismometer that measures vibrations caused by Martian earthquakes and falling meteorites.

Scientists want to explore the interior, because if there is life on Mars, it will be there. There is no liquid water on the surface, and life below the surface would be shielded from radiation. (full at SciTechDaily)