UNDER MARS' SOUTH POLE, THERE IS VOLCANIC ROCK, NOT LIQUID WATER, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY.

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The Mars Express mission of the European Space Agency discovered some brilliant radar reflections at Mars' ice-covered south pole in 2018. Scientists assumed they were staring at liquid water around 1.4 kilometres beneath the ice. However, according to a recent study, the reflections could be created by volcanic rock buried beneath the ice.

"You need both a very salty environment and a strong, locally generated heat source for water to be sustained thus close to the surface," said the study's lead author, Cyril Grima, a planetary scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, in a press statement. The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters, a magazine dedicated to geophysical research.

The researchers used data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), a multi-frequency radar sounder on board the Mars Express spacecraft that has provided nearly 15 years of measurements and is still operational today.

The team explains that lava-formed rocks reflect radar in a similar way on Earth. Clay minerals may be causing the unexplained signals, according to a report published in the same journal last year.

"I think the beauty of Grima's finding is that while it knocks down the idea that there might be liquid water under the planet's south pole today, it also gives us really precise places to go look for evidence of ancient lakes and riverbeds and test hypotheses about the wider drying out of Mars' climate over billions of years," said Isaac Smith, a Mars geophysicist at York University who was not involved in the study.

Dr. Cyril Grima and Dr. Isaac Smith are now working on a proposal for a radar expedition to locate water on Mars. This will aid in the discovery of future human landing sites as well as the search for indications of past life.

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