Odyssey’s First Look: Craft spies signs of ice at the Martian south pole
By Ron Cowen
Astronomers for the first time have found evidence of large amounts of frozen water on Mars. The Red Planet’s south-polar region may contain an expanse of ice just beneath its surface, according to data gathered by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which began mapping the planet late last month.
Water may account by mass for several percent of the topmost meter of material in this part of the planet, William V. Boynton of the University of Arizona in Tucson announced March 1. Emphasizing that his team had analyzed only the first 10 days of data from a several-year mission (SN: 1/19/02, p. 42: Exploring the Red Planet), Boynton says the ice seems to be distributed uniformly within an area as large as the United States.