William Atkins
Saturday, 26 September 2009 19:53
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
In a week where water ice (lunar ice) was found on the Moon, NASA scientists with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission have found a new location to look for water ice (frozen water) on Mars: just under the surface at newly formed impact craters.
Water in frozen form (Martian ice) is already known to exist at the polar and the middle-latitude regions of the planet Mars.
However, scientists using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (
HiRISE) and the Context Imager (
CTX) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (
MRO) found a new source of water ice, specifically at newly formed craters on Mars.
The MRO team scans the Martian surface on a regular basis. They take hundreds of pictures each week for comparison with older images. And, as they compared images, the scientists found newly created impact craters that were only a year or so old.
Under this study, these MRO scientists have found about one hundred of these newly created impact craters--formed when meteors hit Mars. [updated 9-26-09]
These researchers specifically studied five locations of these newly formed impact craters.
They are located between the Utopia Planitia (Latin for “Nowhere Plain”, near where Viking 2 touched down) and the Arcadia Planitia (“Arcadia Plain,” from Arcadia region in ancient Greece), ranging from 130 degrees to 190 degrees East longitude and 40 degrees and 60 degrees North latitude.
Each location indicates that water ice occurs just under the Martian surface about halfway between the north pole and the equator. This region has been less likely in the past as a location to find water ice.
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