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A new analysis of seismic data from the InSight mission to Mars has revealed some surprises. The first: the top 300 meters of the subsurface beneath the InSight landing site near the Martian equator contains little to no ice. "We find that Mars' crust is weak and porous, the sediments are not well-cemented, and there's no ice or not much ice filling the pore spaces," said geophysicist Vashan Wright of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. Wright and co-authors published the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported analysis in Geophysical Research Letters.

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Mars' mass may explain its lack of water

U.S. National Science Foundation-funded researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have formed a hypothesis about the absence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. The team's findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that Mars doesn't have enough mass to retain large amounts of water.

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Discovery may have a strong impact, from water purification to drug manufacturing

Water is weird and yet so important. In fact, it is one of the most unusual molecules on Earth -- it boils at a temperature it shouldn't, it expands and floats when in a solid state and its surface tension is higher than it should be.