Giant ice deposit found on Mars
19/03/2007 10:46  - (SA)  

Water on Mars 'underground' Probe ready for Martian fly-by Mars water fuels search for life

Washington - Huge deposits of pure frozen water have been found under the southern pole of Mars following a probe by the European spacecraft Mars Express, according to a new study.

"While the precise composition of the deposits is unknown, it is believed they are predominantly water ice and that they represent the largest known reservoir of H2O on the planet," said the study, in the March 15 edition of Science magazine.

Researchers used signals sent by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface Ionospheric Sounding (Marsis), which penetrated some 3.7km below the planet's surface, to make their calculations.

"We apply a technique commonly used to study the interior of ice sheets and glaciers on Earth, radar echo sounding, to study the south pole layered deposits of Mars," added the study.

If the ice was to melt completely it would cover the entire Red Planet to a depth of 11m, the scientists revealed.

The same instruments were used in November 2005 to detect underground water for the first time on the planet, that time at the north pole.

Water may be flowing on Mars

Earlier this month scientists said in a study published in Nature that they had found evidence that Mars was once latticed by an underground water system, proving the planet has had a long and complex relationship with one of the potential ingredients for life.

Today Mars, which like Earth was formed some 4.6 billion years ago, is bone dry, its thin atmosphere almost entirely bereft of water.

But most experts now agree that the planet was once covered with seas and a balmy, Earth-like atmosphere, fuelling speculation that it could have harboured some form of life, even bacterial.

Even more tantalising, in the light of the Nature study, is recent evidence presented by Nasa scientists that some water is still flowing along the surface of Mars, presumably from underground sources.

Pictures taken by the US Mars Global Surveyor orbiter detected two gullies that the scientists said could only have been created by a flow of liquid. The gullies had not existed when the region was photographed earlier.

Water is one of three essential ingredients for life as we know it, along with energy, such as sunlight, and elements like carbon and oxygen.

- AFP

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