3 underground lakes surrounding a salty lake found on Mars: Scientists

Team Udayavani, Sep 29, 2020, 8:12 PM IST

Scientists claim to have found three underground lakes surrounding a large underground lake on Mars which was first discovered in 2018.

The lakes are spread over about 75,000 square kilometres with the central one measuring 30 kilometres across.

The scientists used a data set comprising 134 observations from 2012 to 2019. All the smaller lakes are a few kilometres wide.

According to Engadget, the team used data from a radar instrument on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft to investigate the planet’s southern polar region.

Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding or MARSIS, as the instrument is called, is capable of sending out radio waves that bounce off materials on the planet’s surface.