The Change Mariner

More Evidence Of Water On Mars

Reuters.com:

Spectral images from the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter show there is plenty of icy water at the southern pole of Mars, French scientists said Wednesday.

Weeks after NASA's Mars rovers uncovered evidence of water on the Red Planet, images from the OMEGA instrument aboard the Mars Express indicate its southern pole has three distinct areas containing water ice.

"We present the first direct identification and mapping of both carbon dioxide and water ice in the Martian high southern latitudes," Jean-Pierre Bibring of the Institut d'Astrophique Spatiale in Orsay, France, said in a report published online by the science journal Nature.

The images were taken at the end of the summer on Mars so they show that the ice is present all year. Bibring and his colleagues also observed exposed water ice in a region further from the southern cap, where a large amount of water ice is thought to be buried.