NASA Spacecraft Detects Buried Glaciers on Mars

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News Release: 2008-220 November 20, 2008

NASA Spacecraft Detects Buried Glaciers on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed vast Martian glaciers of
water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously
identified on the Red Planet.

Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21
issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from edges of mountains
or cliffs. A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as
remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age. This discovery is
similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica.

"Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is
not in the polar caps," said John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin, who is lead author of
the report. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles
and up to one-half-mile thick. And there are many more. In addition to their scientific value, they
could be a source of water to support future exploration of Mars."

Scientists have been puzzled by what are known as aprons – gently sloping areas containing rocky
deposits at the bases of taller geographical features – since NASA's Viking orbiters first observed
them on the Martian surface in the 1970s. One theory has been that the aprons are flows of rocky
debris lubricated by a small amount of ice. Now, the shallow radar instrument on the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided scientists an answer to this Martian puzzle.

"These results are the smoking gun pointing to the presence of large amounts of water ice at these
latitudes," said Ali Safaeinili, a shallow-radar instruments team member with NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Radar echoes received by the spacecraft indicated radio waves pass through the aprons and reflect off
a deeper surface below without significant loss in strength. That is expected if the apron areas are
composed of thick ice under a relatively thin covering. The radar does not detect reflections from the
interior of these deposits as would occur if they contained significant rock debris. The apparent
velocity of radio waves passing through the apron is consistent with a composition of water ice.

Scientists developed the shallow radar instrument for the orbiter to examine these mid-latitude
geographical features and layered deposits at the Martian poles. The Italian Space Agency provided
the instrument.

"We developed the instrument so it could operate on this kind of terrain," said Roberto Seu, leader of
the instrument science team at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy. "It is now a priority to
observe other examples of these aprons to determine whether they are also ice."

Holt and 11 co-authors report the buried glaciers lie in the Hellas Basin region of Mars' southern
hemisphere. The radar also has detected similar-appearing aprons extending from cliffs in the
northern hemisphere.

"There's an even larger volume of water ice in the northern deposits," said JPL geologist Jeffrey J.
Plaut, who will be publishing results about these deposits in the American Geophysical Union's
Geophysical Research Letters. "The fact these features are in the same latitude bands, about 35 to 60
degrees in both hemispheres, points to a climate-driven mechanism for explaining how they got
there."

The rocky debris blanket topping the glaciers apparently has protected the ice from vaporizing, which
would happen if it were exposed to the atmosphere at these latitudes.

"A key question is, how did the ice get there in the first place?" said James W. Head of Brown
University, Providence, R.I. "The tilt of Mars' spin axis sometimes gets much greater than it is now.
Climate modeling tells us ice sheets could cover mid-latitude regions of Mars during those high-tilt
periods. The buried glaciers make sense as preserved fragments from an ice age millions of years
ago. On Earth, such buried glacial ice in Antarctica preserves the record of traces of ancient
organisms and past climate history."

JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro

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