Space & Astronomy

Mars glaciers contain huge amounts of water

By T.K. Randall
April 9, 2015 ·  16 comments

Terrain on Mars indicative of buried glaciers. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A new study has revealed that the quantity of water locked up in these subsurface glaciers is much greater than anyone had previously predicted - enough to submerge the surface of the planet in a layer of ice more than 3ft thick.

The discovery was made thanks to a combination of radar image data and computer simulations which were used to calculate the volume of the glaciers based on glacial activity here on Earth.

"We have looked at radar measurements spanning 10 years back in time to see how thick the ice is and how it behaves," said Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson from the University of Copenhagen."We have calculated that the ice in the glaciers is equivalent to over 150 billion cubic meters of ice - that much ice could cover the entire surface of Mars with 1.1 meters (3.6 feet) of ice."

The finding of so much ice beneath the planet's surface could help to explain what happened to at least some of the water that once existed on Mars in the form of lakes, rivers and oceans.

It is thought that the dust covering the ice may have prevented it from evaporating in to space.

Source: Discovery News | Comments (16)

Tags: Mars, Glacier, Ice