Nov 21 2008
From The Space Library
A team of scientists led by John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin announced in the journal Science that they had discovered large buried glaciers of water ice in the Hellas Basin on Mars. Using the Shallow Radar instrument on NASA’s MRO, the team had made radar soundings of the gently sloping geographical features known as aprons. Scientists had long puzzled over these features. The radio waves had passed through the aprons without a significant loss of strength, indicating that the area contains a thick layer of ice, covered by a thin layer of rocky debris. The velocity of the radio waves was consistent with the composition of water ice. The researchers believed that these glaciers are the largest deposits of ice on Mars outside the polar caps. Besides providing a possible source of water for human explorers, the glacial ice may have scientific value: on Earth, buried glacial ice has preserved a record of ancient organisms and a history of the planet’s climate.
NASA, “NASA Spacecraft Detects Buried Glaciers on Mars,” news release 08-304, 20 November 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-304_MRO_BuriedGlaciers.html (accessed 22 August 2011); see also John W. Holt et al., “Radar Sounding Evidence for Buried Glaciers in the Southern Mid-Latitudes of Mars,” Science 322, no. 5905 (21 November 2008): 1235-1238.
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