Vast glaciers of ice are common on Mars, but you have to dig below the surface to find them, new radar views from a NASA spacecraft show.
These hidden deposits of buried Martian ice were first confirmed two years ago, but recent scans of the red planet by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are revealing new clues about how the ice may have gotten there.
Scientists think the Mars glaciers may have been left as remnants when regional ice sheets retreated.
“The hypothesis is the whole area was covered with an ice sheet during a different climate period, and when the climate dried out, these deposits remained only where they had been covered by a layer of debris protecting the ice from the atmosphere,” said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The ice extends for hundreds of miles, or kilometers, in a mid-latitude region of Mars called Deuteronilus Mensae.