IN BRIEF
More underground lakes on Mars
ew analysis of data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter strengthens the case for super-salty lakes under Mars’s south polar cap, first discovered in 2018.. Using a new analysis technique on 134 radar images taken over 10 years, the researchers not only confirmed the probable presence of an underground lake, they found that it has friends: The “large body of water [is] encircled by patchy water pools or wet areas of smaller extent,” they write. The largest putative lake is about 20 by 30 kilometres; the smaller patches appear as 5- to 15-kilometre-wide spots. The nature of the lakes remains a matter of speculation: To maintain liquids in a place where temperatures might reach as low as -120°C, the water would have to be a hypersaline brine. Other researchers argue in favour of an additional heat source such as volcanism. Regardless of how liquids exist, the evidence for sub-ice liquid-water ponds has grown strong.
