Mars had less water than previously thought

Mars, which was once known to contain a massive body of water, may have less water, suggests new research. According to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the Red Planet faced a collision with a huge astral entity around four billion years ago.

The collision known as Late Heavy Bombardment refers to a period where it is believed that a disproportionately large number of asteroids collided with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Many meteors and meteorites impacted Mars resulting in the large number of massive impact craters on the surface of the Red Planet. The event is also believed to have created its northern lowland - so large it's visible from space - where a significant tract of Martian land appears to be literally sliced off.

This basin is also believed to have once contained a massive body of water.

"Mars used to have a lot of water and it still has ice likely before this collision," said Mohammad Afzal Shadab, a CSEM graduate student at the Oden Institute at the varsity.

Shadab's team developed a very simple mathematical formula for predicting just how high that groundwater table would have been.