At a Glance

Evidence points to a body of water buried a mile below the southern ice cap on Mars.The temperature of the water in the 12-mile-wide lakeis believed to be minus-90 degrees Fahrenheit.The Italian team of researchers suspect the water is salty, or briny, which keeps it in liquid form.

What appears to be a large underground lake has been detected deep below the ice cap at Mars' southern pole, a new study reports.

An instrument called MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) carried aboard the European Space Agency'sMars Expressspacecraftcollected low-frequency radar profiles of the area between May 2012 and December 2015. The profiles contain "evidence of liquid water trapped below the ice of ," according to the study.

After further analysis, the Italian researchers determined the radar profiles indicate "a stable body of liquid water on Mars."

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Thebody of wateris roughly 12 miles across and buried , the scientists reported in the study published Wednesday in the journal Science.

“This subsurface anomaly on Mars has radar properties matching water ,” Roberto Orosei, principal investigator of the MARSIS experiment and lead author of the paper, said in a press release. “This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered.”

The lake,believed to be minus-90 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to what lies beneath the ice cap in Greenland and the Antarctic. Because it is salty, or briny, it remains in its liquid form and does not freeze.

Andrea Cicchetti, MARSIS operations manager and a co-author of the paper, said the researchers haveseenhints of interesting subsurface features suggestive of water for years but "couldn’t reproduce the result from orbit to orbit."

Cicchetti noted that the team had to come up with a different operating mode that now allows them to "see things that simply were not possible before,” she added.

While the team was unable to detect the bottom of the lake, they estimate it is about 3 feet deep.

Researchers have long suspected evidence of water could be found on the Red Planet, a precursor for life on Mars. It is believed the planet once was home to rivers and lakes before the climate significantly changed overthe course ofits4.6-billion-year history.

Because water could not be detected on the surface, scientists began to explore undergroundevidence of water.

Determining whether life has ever existed on Mars remains an open questionand is one that consumes many astronomers.

“This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbor planet and its habitability,” said Dmitri Titov, ESA’s Mars Express project scientist.