The European orbiter Mars Express has detected frozen water at Mars’s south pole, mission officials said in Germany on Friday.
“We have identified water ice on the south pole,” Vittorio Formisano, a European Space Agency scientist, said, unveiling preliminary data garnered by the unmanned spacecraft.
The announcement at a press conference at the Mars Express mission headquarters backs the strong indications provided by Nasa’s Mars Odyssey orbiter in March 2002.
It suggested that the planet’s southern polar cap contains abundant stores of water ice.
Nasa’s evidence came from big signals from Odyssey‘s gamma ray spectrometer of the presence of hydrogen, one component of water.
The Red Planet’s northern ice cap is already thought to contain water ice, along with frozen carbon dioxide, the substance also known as dry ice.
Water, in its liquid form, is one of the ingredients for nurturing and sustaining life, and Mars is considered to be the best bet for this outside Earth. — Sapa-AFP
US lander falls silent