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PASADENA, Calif. - 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 Nov. 21 issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from edges of mountains or cliffs. A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age. This discovery is similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica.

"Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps," said John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin, who is lead author of the report. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to one-half-mile thick. And there are many more. In addition to their scientific value, they could be a source of water to support future exploration of Mars."

Scientists have been puzzled by what are known as aprons - gently sloping areas containing rocky deposits at the bases of taller geographical features - since NASA's Viking orbiters first observed them on the Martian surface in the 1970s. One theory has been that the aprons are flows of rocky debris lubricated by a small amount of ice. Now, the shallow radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided scientists an answer to this Martian puzzle.

"These results are the smoking gun pointing to the presence of large amounts of water ice at these latitudes,” said Ali Safaeinili, a shallow-radar instruments team member with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Radar echoes received by the spacecraft indicated radio waves pass through the aprons and reflect off a deeper surface below without significant loss in strength. That is expected if the apron areas are composed of thick ice under a relatively thin covering. The radar does not detect reflections from the interior of these deposits as would occur if they contained significant rock debris. The apparent velocity of radio waves passing through the apron is consistent with a composition of water ice.

Scientists developed the shallow radar instrument for the orbiter to examine these mid-latitude geographical features and layered deposits at the Martian poles. The Italian Space Agency provided the instrument.

"We developed the instrument so it could operate on this kind of terrain," said Roberto Seu, leader of the instrument science team at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy. "It is now a priority to observe other examples of these aprons to determine whether they are also ice."

Holt and 11 co-authors report the buried glaciers lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars' southern hemisphere. The radar also has detected similar-appearing aprons extending from cliffs in the northern hemisphere.

"There's an even larger volume of water ice in the northern deposits,” said JPL geologist Jeffrey J. Plaut, who will be publishing results about these deposits in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. "The fact these features are in the same latitude bands, about 35 to 60 degrees in both hemispheres, points to a climate-driven mechanism for explaining how they got there."

The rocky debris blanket topping the glaciers apparently has protected the ice from vaporizing, which would happen if it were exposed to the atmosphere at these latitudes.

"A key question is, how did the ice get there in the first place?” said James W. Head of Brown University, Providence, R.I. "The tilt of Mars' spin axis sometimes gets much greater than it is now. Climate modeling tells us ice sheets could cover mid-latitude regions of Mars during those high-tilt periods. The buried glaciers make sense as preserved fragments from an ice age millions of years ago. On Earth, such buried glacial ice in Antarctica preserves the record of traces of ancient organisms and past climate history."

JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro

It's always interesting to know more about how Mars evolved! Too bad it's still impossible to go and live there, although they find glaciers/water..
btw, are we three (you, gen, and i) the only nerds who care about these stuff?
lol!
I receive these stories to my email too! But you are way faster than me reading them..haha

NASA and ESA are projecting landing a man on the moon between 2030 and 2036...

I've always envied people of 1969 when Apollo's The Eagle landed on the moon and was broadcasted live for everybody to see.
I can't wait for a Mars landing - and although I'm not studying to become an astronaut, I might just be a part of the team that would research for the project or even engineer parts of it. That would be great!

Though to be honest, they're going to get there, land, stick up a flag, collect rocks and head home but I'd like to see if science can come up with something to help Mars re-build its atmosphere. Then we could probably live there

I call president of Mars!!
Raneem you can be my [s]bitch[/s] secretary.

I think Mars needs a huge shake to start it's weather cycle once again,I can only think of nuclear energy or re-planting the planet with seeds that do not require water and can grow on humidity maybe.

Space radiation and possible cancer infection throughout a mars flight are huge obsticales against sending humans there,but it's somehow fixed,they managed lately to build a magnetic field around the space ship that'll carry astronauts there.

Isn't it weird that we supposedly landed on the moon in 1969 (When technology was much less advanced than now) And it's gonna take us 20+ Years to land again while we have the most advanced technology.

^ very weird indeed!

It's not really weird considering how far Mars is from Earth. The problem is with the distance and not the flight itself. It would take a long time to get to Mars and return and there's no possible way that you can store enough fuel to power a spaceship for over a year of space flying. There's simply not enough room unless they build a monster of a spacecraft which will not be practical.

That's why they have two options:

A) Launch the spacecraft, orbit the Earth (and therefore gain orbital velocity), and fire it up to Mars. Because there's no gravity, the orbital velocity can take the spacecraft to great distances (unless obstructed by another object or trapped in the gravity of another terrestrial body). They will not have to use their fuel until they get there. This is called the Hohmann Transfer Orbits. Once they get there, the flight can use aerobraking which is using the planet's atmosphere to slow down the space craft and make a landing possible. If they don't do that (and partnered by Mars' own gravitational pull), the space craft will simply plunge through the Martian atmosphere and it'll be travelling at such a great speed that it won't be able to slow down to initiate a landing.
This method is great but it takes time (about 9 months) and for Mars and Earth to be in the right alignment to pull this off (once ever 2 years) is not very practical.

B) They can supply the craft with a nuclear reactor. A nuclear reactor never really needs any fuel, it could go forever. That way, they'd get there in less than 6 months, do their research, fire it up and come back home.

Why haven't they done that yet? Well, think about it: you can't jump atop tons of fuel onto a spacecraft and head to a hostile alien planet. You need to do your research and find out what you walking into, set your mission objectives, and know what you're doing.
Before landing on the moon (better yet, before the whole Apollo programme started), there was Project Mercury (to launch a human into space and bring him back safely), then the Gemini programme (to perfect ways to launch cosmonauts to the moon), then Apollo came along to land a man on the moon. Mind you, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but its the earlier 10 Apollos that were the crucial steps to get Apollo 11 to succeed. They used cutting edge technology at the time and each programme took 10-years-ish (although part of that was because the Americans and the Soviets were racing through it really) so it takes a lot of work and research. And that's just the moon. Our own neighboring moon.

Trust me, it's a lot harder when it comes to Mars. We're only discovering now where all the ice is. We've only landed one successful surveyor. We still need to send more unmanned missions and do our homework pretty well before even thinking about sending a man over there. Plus, NASA has been occupied with the Hubble Telescope, The Shuttle Programme, as well as the ISS. They're been pretty busy since the space race ended in 1975.
We have the technology, just not enough data to structure the mission around that technology.

Why do we need to go see what's on Mars?? We all know that's where all the Decepticons are...

^

I'm interested too i just read the article though.