Surprise, Surprise: Subsurface Water on Mars Defies Expectations

Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments. A new analysis of seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises. Many planetary scientists, including Manga, have long suspected that the Martian subsurface would be full of ice. Their suspicions have melted away. Still, big ice sheets and frozen ground ice remain at the Martian poles. "As scientists, we're now confronted with the best data, the best observations. And our models predicted that there should still be frozen ground at that latitude with aquifers underneath," said Manga, professor and chair of Earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley.