In doing so, the method defines the scope of what scientists refer to as the northern Martian paleo-ocean in more detail.

The work was published in July in the journal Icarus, which is affiliated with the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The research was led by Jaroslav Klokočník, professor emeritus at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Gunther Kletetschka, associate research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among the three co-authors. Kletetschka is also affiliated with Charles University in the Czech Republic.

"A lot of people are excited about water on Mars because there may be life forms that once existed on Mars or maybe exist today in some bacterial form," Kletetschka said. "We can use this gravity approach to look for water on Mars, because we have done it already on Earth.

"In an area of northern Africa, for example, this gravity approach found a shoreline of a long-ago lake, and its finding was consistent with the archaeological evidence indicating a shoreline of that lake," he said.

The authors write that analyzing the gravity aspects of Mars to better understand the planet improves upon prior approaches. They note that it can "provide complete information with a better insight of the celestial body, applicable in geology, geophysics, hydrology, glaciology and other disciplines."

The work by Kletetschka and colleagues differs from the traditional approach of mapping a surface based on gravity anomalies alone.

[SS Comment] The new research method can not only explore the history of ocean changes, but also explain one of the current causes of Mars' influence. Of course, this also lays a theoretical foundation for future research on other planetary water sources and ensuring human survival.