Mars has its own version of the Grand Canyon, and scientists have learned this dramatic feature is home to "significant amounts of water" after a discovery made by an orbiter circling the red planet, according to the European Space Agency. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in 2016 as a joint mission between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, detected the water in Valles Marineris on Mars. This canyon system is 10 times longer, five times deeper and 20 times wider than the Grand Canyon. The water is located beneath the surface of the canyon system and was detected by the orbiter"s FREND instrument, or Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector. This instrument is able to map hydrogen in the top meter (3.28 feet) of Martian soil. Most water on Mars is located in the planet"s polar regions and remains frozen as water ice. Valles Marineris is just south of the planet"s equator, where temperatures typically aren"t cold enough for water ice to remain. The observations were collected by the orbiter between May 2018 to February 2021. Previously, other orbiters have searched for water just beneath the Martian surface and detected small amounts under Martian dust. A study detailing the findings was published Wednesday in the journal Icarus. "With (the Trace Gas Orbiter) we can look down to one meter below this dusty layer and see what"s really going on below Mars" surface -- and, crucially, locate water-rich "oases" that couldn"t be detected with previous instruments," said study author Igor Mitrofanov, principal investigator of the FREND neutron telescope, in a statement.