--- title: Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought description: A new study reveals what may have happened to Mars's rivers and oceans. canonical: https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-08-13T19:53:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T18:08:26.416Z article:section: Science og:title: Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought og:description: A new study reveals what may have happened to Mars's rivers and oceans. og:url: https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte45c82acb16dce83/698a59db457a527b37d6aa16/PIA22571orig.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3819 og:image:height: 2148 og:image:alt: PIA22571~orig og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought twitter:description: A new study reveals what may have happened to Mars's rivers and oceans. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte45c82acb16dce83/698a59db457a527b37d6aa16/PIA22571orig.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Aug 13, 2024 7:53 PM UTC  An artist's rendering of the InSight lander on Mars An artist's rendering of the InSight lander on Mars NASA/JPL-Caltech  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Aug 13, 2024 7:53 PM UTC Time was, Earth may not have been the solar system’s only garden planet. For its first billion or so years, Mars was partly covered in water, as dry ocean basins and riverbeds on its surface now attest. But three billion years ago the planet lost its magnetic field, [possibly due to a cooling of its core](https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-marss-magnetic-field-let-its-atmosphere-slip-away), allowing the solar wind to strip away its atmosphere. This, so the thinking went, caused the water to evaporate into space. However, according to [a new study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409983121) in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, it appears that the water may still be there, trapped in the pores of volcanic rock 11.5 to 20 km (7 to 13 mi.) underground. If that much water were transported back to the surface, it would cover the entirety of Mars in a globe-girdling ocean about a mile deep. Even below ground, the presence of so much water could have significant implications for the possibility of Martian life in the rocky pores or slurry. “Water is necessary for life as we know it,” said Michael Manga, study co-author and professor of geophysics and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, in a [statement](https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/08/12/scientists-find-oceans-of-water-on-mars-its-just-too-deep-to-tap/). “I don’t see why \[the underground reservoir\] is not a habitable environment. It’s certainly true on Earth—deep, deep mines host life, the bottom of the ocean hosts life.” **Read More**: [_How Two Stranded Astronauts Are Camping Out in Space_](https://time.com/7010425/stranded-astronauts-iss-butch-wilmore-suni-williams/) The new findings are the result of studies conducted by the [Mars InSight spacecraft](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/insight/), which landed on the Red Planet in 2018 and functioned until 2022\. InSight’s suite of instruments included a seismometer, which detected marsquakes up to a magnitude of 5—[a moderate quake](https://www.britannica.com/science/earthquake-geology/Earthquake-magnitude) on the Richter scale. The tremors may have been caused by volcanic stirrings, meteor impacts, or the contraction of the crust, but what mattered more than the source was the speed at which the energy was transmitted through the subsurface. Computer models of those measurements were consistent with the tremors passing through a water-logged region at the 11.5 to 20 km depth. “The available data are best explained by a water-saturated mid-crust,” the authors wrote. It’s not just the seismic data that point to that conclusion. The amount of surface water locked in Mars’s polar caps is not remotely enough to account for what was once there—judging by the depth of the river and ocean depressions. That means that the water either sank or vanished into space, and the new findings indicate it was the former. **Read More**: [_Is There Life on Mars?_](https://time.com/6140688/life-on-mars-clues/) “Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface and interior,” said Vashan Wright, another co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in a [statement](https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/08/12/scientists-find-oceans-of-water-on-mars-its-just-too-deep-to-tap/). “A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there.” The presence of the water may mean big things for Martian biology as well as for our understanding of the planet’s history, but we are no closer to one day being able to live off the Martian land. The deepest hole ever drilled on Earth is the [Kola superdeep borehole](https://interestingengineering.com/lists/facts-the-superdeep-kola-borehole) in northwest Russia, which extends down about 12 km. That may be deep enough to touch the Red Planet water, but nobody pretends it would be possible to transport the same kind of massive drilling equipment that dug the Kola hole to Mars. “Drilling a hole 10 kilometers deep on Mars—even for \[Elon\] Musk—would be difficult,” Manga [told BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxl849j77ko). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/"},"headline":"Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought","datePublished":"2024-08-13T19:53:02.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T18:08:26.416Z","description":"A new study reveals what may have happened to Mars's rivers and oceans.","url":"https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/","keywords":["Space","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte45c82acb16dce83/698a59db457a527b37d6aa16/PIA22571orig.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte45c82acb16dce83/698a59db457a527b37d6aa16/PIA22571orig.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"PIA22571~orig","caption":"An artist's rendering of the InSight lander on Mars","creditText":"NASA/JPL-Caltech","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/space/","name":"Space"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7010550/is-there-water-on-mars/","name":"Mars May Have Far More Water Than We Thought"}}]}] ```