An Astounding Amount Of Water Has Been Discovered Beneath The Martian North Pole
Image: SA/DLR/FU Berlin; NASA MGS MOLA Science Team
Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists detected a massive reservoir of frozen water sandwiched by layers of sand beneath the northern polar ice cap on Mars. The cavi unit rests about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the Martian north pole, and prior to the new study, scientists figured it was primarily composed of sand dunes and contained less than 50 percent water ice by volume. “The only hypothesis that can reconcile our results and all the previous studies is that the cavi unit is made of alternating ice sheets, remnants of former polar caps, and sand layers, which acted as protective blanket and prevented the complete retreat of the old polar ice,” Nerozzi told Gizmodo.
Source: gizmodo.com