Large amounts of hidden water discovered on Mars by the Euro-Russian ship Exo Mars TGO

The Exo Mars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), which has been orbiting Mars for years, has detected significant amounts of hidden water in heart of the Valles Marineris Grand Canyon system. According to ESA, the water-rich area is about the size of the Netherlands.

The water, which is hidden just below the surface of the neighboring planet, was discovered by the FREND instrument of the spacecraft, which maps hydrogen to the upper layer of Mars’s soil. While it was known that there is water on the “red” planet, most had been found in its icy polar regions in the form of ice. To date, only small quantities have been found in lower latitudes.

Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, who led the new study, said: “FREND has discovered an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris gorge system. Assuming that this hydrogen is bound to water molecules, we estimate that up to 40% of the area just below the soil surface in this area appears to be water.

“We found that a central part of the Valles Marineris was full of water, much more water than we expected,” said researcher Alexei Malakov, also of the Russian Space Research Institute. Water can be in the form of ice or be chemically bound to minerals in the subsoil, although according to him, “it is more likely that this water exists in the form of ice.” It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.

“This finding is an amazing first step, but we need more observations to know for sure exactly what form of water we are dealing with,” said ESA’s Hakan Svendham.

In any case, as most future missions to Mars plan to land at lower latitudes, locating such a “reservoir” of water opens up a significant prospect for exploring the planet. The water previously detected by the Mars Express spacecraft on Mars is either below the planet’s south pole or in the middle latitude but at a depth of a few kilometers, so in both cases it is more difficult to use than the much more superficial water in the Valles Marineris. This makes the Mars Gorge system – the largest in our solar system (ten times as long and five times as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US) – an even more promising target for future manned exploration missions.

The Exo Mars Trace Gas Orbiter was launched in 2016 and in 2022 will also follow, also as part of the Exo Mars mission, the European rover Rosalind Franklin and the Russian landing device Kazachok, which will work together to find possible traces of life on Mars.

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