Mars study suggests ocean water could lie miles beneath the Red Planet's surface

New research suggests that Mars may have enough water beneath its surface to form a global ocean.

On Monday, the scientists published their findings, based on seismic measurements captured by NASA's Mars InSight rover, which detected more than 1,300 earthquakes before shutting down two years ago.

Water is thought to be hidden in cracks in underground rocks and could be as deep as seven to twenty kilometers beneath the Martian crust.

Water may have seeped from the surface billions of years ago, when the Red Planet had rivers, lakes and possibly oceans, lead scientist Vashan Wright of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, told The Associated Press.

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A view of Mars from NASA's Mars InSight Lander (NASA/Twitter)

But even if water might be present beneath Mars' crust, that doesn't necessarily mean it supports life, Wright said.

“On the contrary, our findings mean that there are environments that could potentially be habitable,” he told the AP in an email.

Wright's team used computer models and Insight measurements, including earthquake speeds, to determine that groundwater was the most likely explanation.

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Artist's concept of MAVEN orbiting Mars: This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and Mars limb. (Credits: NASA/GSFC)

The team's results were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wright said that if InSight's location near the planet's equator is representative of the rest of Mars, there would be enough groundwater to fill a global ocean to a depth of about a mile.

Scientists would have to find a way to drill deep enough into the Earth's crust to confirm the potential for life and the presence of water.

Although large amounts of water are believed to have existed on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago, scientists speculate that the water either leaked into the ground or was lost to space.

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It is also thought that water disappeared when the planet's atmosphere thinned, turning the planet into a dry, dusty world.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.