A hidden ocean on Mars, would it spur human settlement?

A new NASA study suggests Mars contains an ocean of water underground, sparking conversations about human settlement.

A stream of liquid water could be brimming beneath the craggy, tan rock crust on Mars, enough to make up a whole ocean, according to a NASA study, whose results were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Here’s more about NASA’s latest discovery, and what it tells us about the potential of human settlements on the Red Planet in the future:

NASA’s outer-space robotic explorer, the InSight Lander, touched down on Mars in 2018. It studied seismic waves on the planet, which read data from more than 1,300 marsquakes before shutting down two years ago.

InSight collected data from a plain near the planet’s equator called Elysium Planitia.

A group of researchers combined this data with computer models and speculated that underground water is the most likely explanation for the seismic readings.