Radar Indicates Buried Glaciers on Mars
Explanation:
What created this unusual terrain on Mars?
The floors of several mid-latitude craters in
Hellas Basin on Mars appear unusually grooved, flat, and shallow.
New radar images from the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter bolster an exciting hypothesis: huge
glaciers of buried ice.
Evidence indicates that
such glaciers cover an area larger than a city and extend as much as a kilometer
deep.
The ice would have been kept from
evaporating into the
thin Martian air by a covering of dirt.
If true, this would indicate the largest volume of water ice outside of the
Martian poles,
much larger than the
frozen puddles
recently discovered by the
Phoenix lander.
Such lake-sized ice blocks located so close to the Martian equator might make a good
drinking reservoir for
future astronauts exploring Mars.
How the glaciers originally formed remains a mystery.
In the meantime, before packing up to
explore Mars, please
take a moment to
suggest a name
for NASA's
next Martian rover.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
