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Buried glaciers found on Mars
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-21 08:18


An artist's conception shows what NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed, vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet. Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's ground-penetrating radar and report in the November 21, 2008 issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from edges of mountains or cliffs. [Agencies]

Radar echoes

The team used MRO's Shallow Radar instrument to penetrate the rocky debris flows that lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars' southern hemisphere. They examined the radar echoes to see what lay beneath the surface. All signs pointed to ice, and lots of it.

The radar echoes received back by MRO indicated that radio waves passed through the overlying debris material and reflected off a deeper surface below without losing much strength -- the expected signal for thick ice covered by a thin layer of debris.

The radar echoes also showed no signs of significant rock debris within the glaciers, suggesting that they are relatively pure water ice.

"These results are the smoking gun pointing to the presence of large amounts of water ice at these latitudes," said Ali Safaeinili, a Shallow Rader team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.