Massive Martian Ice Discovery Opens a Window into Red Planet’s History

The ice sheet was discovered by Scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Arizona who say that if this newly discovered ice was melted it would form a layer of water around Mars of at least 5 feet , even in its frozen state it could give scientists a record of the past climate on Mars.

A composite image showing alternating layers of ice and sand in an area where they are exposed on the surface of Mars. The photograph, taken with the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, was adjusted to show water ice as light-colored layers and sand as darker layers of blue. The tiny bright white flecks are thin patches of frost. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The findings were corroborated by an independent study using gravity data instead of radar, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Nerozzi was a co-author. The papers have been published simultaneously in Geophysical Research Letters.

“Surprisingly, the total volume of water locked up in these buried polar deposits is roughly the same as all the water ice known to exist in glaciers and buried ice layers at lower latitudes on Mars, and they are approximately the same age,” he said.

Holt, who was a UTIG scientist and research professor for 19 years before joining the University of Arizona in 2018, has been a co-investigator with SHARAD since the spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2006.

Nerozzi said that studying this record of past polar glaciation could help determine whether Mars was ever habitable.

“Understanding how much water was available globally versus what’s trapped in the poles is important if you’re going to have liquid water on Mars,” Nerozzi said. “You can have all the right conditions for life, but if most of the water is locked up at the poles, then it becomes difficult to have sufficient amounts of liquid water near the equator.”
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Hopefully further study of this Ice will give scientists a better idea of how long Mars was actually habitable so giving an indication of how long in the Martian past life was viable.

time to export greenhouse-gasses to mars !
heat it up and in decades we can live freely on mars...!

a reply to: gortex

That'd be a lot of water. Makes the thought of future colonization a bit more realistic, doesn't it?

So, serious question: how many times are we going to "rediscover" ice on alien planets, notably Mars? Seriously, it's like we keep finding the same # over and over, and we're surprised beyond reproach every time we find the same thing, in the same place.

a reply to: seagull

I hope so , if we can get our collective acts together one day we will go and perhaps stay on Mars , not sure it'll be in my lifetime though.

a reply to: dothedew

It isn't the discovery so much as the quantity at this one site , it's also been shielded by the sand over a long period so hasn't been affected by Solar radiation offering an insight into past climate on Mars.

a reply to: dothedew

They're feeding us with crumbs but they know a lot more...

It's controlled information designed to keep us "informed".

All a big show.

a reply to: dothedew

It's the amount. That's a staggering amount of ice. ...and it has a great potential to tell us a lot about the history of younger Mars.

a reply to: gortex

If that ice is the leftovers, meaning old, original, it might hold mummified remains of possible organisms,

A wild thought at least..

a reply to: ressiv

Algae could do it.

Think it was the premise of one of the movies out not long ago.

Probably take a lot longer than mere decades, all the same, to change the atmosphere in any kind of significant manner, more like centuries or millennia.

Why don't we build that huge alien device from Total Recall and shake and bake an atmosphere?

a reply to: Arnie123

Why would we need to build it?

Just send up Arnold to turn the thing on.

a reply to: ressiv

Unleash the Lichens!

agree ! still wondering why we diddend drop some containers with algees into the atmosfeer of venus …
lots of food and heat for them there to produce oxgene

a reply to: andy06shake