The newfound lake stretches some 12 miles from end-to-end, and was discovered using a radar instrument called MARSIS on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which first reached Mars nearly 15 years ago. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Science.
“This is just one small study area,” says study author Roberto Orosei, who’s also principal investigator of the MARSIS experiment. “It is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered.”
Scientists found the lake by launching radar pulses from the orbiter to penetrate the surface and reflect back, revealing secrets from just below the surface. It was discovered as they surveyed the Planum Australe region near Mars’ southern ice cap, which is made of water ice covered by frozen carbon dioxide.
Between 2012 and 2015, the team obtained 29 radar samples and used them to map the subsurface nearly one mile deep in the area and about a dozen miles wide.
