Posted on 03/15/2007 2:23:26 PM PDT by Sopater
Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property any time soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.
With a radar technique, astronomers have penetrated for the first time about 2.5 miles (nearly four kilometers) beneath the south pole's frozen surface.
The data showed that nearly pure water ice lies beneath.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center.
Discovered in the early 1970s, layered deposits of ice and dust cap the north and south poles of Mars. Until now, the deposits have been difficult to study closely with existing telescopes and satellites.
The current advance comes from a probe of the deposits using an instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter.
"This is the first time that a ground-penetrating system has ever been used on Mars," said the new radar study's lead author, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "All the other instruments used to study the surface of Mars in the past really have only been sensitive to what occurs at the very surface."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Needs some Martian global warming.
Anyone interested in forming a Mars Corporation to trade carbon credits to earthling moonbats?
Very cool space ping!
Warm that puppy up post-haste!
Wow.
You beat me to it. Let's send a couple libs to check it out.
Around these parts, they call it "ice" or "rocks" as in "bourbon on the rocks".
SEND AL GORE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just kidding.
Too cool......
I only wish Robert Heinlein had lived to see this day.
Same topic, different source
Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1801465/posts
Posted on 03/15/2007 12:01:58 PM AKDT by Pharmboy
Arnold needs to get up there and throw the switch.
"Get your ass to Mars!!!"
Can we shuttle Al Gore there since this one is too hot for him?
Should be coming soon. I read recently that our overuse of fossil fuels here on earth is causing the temperature to rise everywhere in the solar system including even pluto. Al Gore would be proud. ;)
There, that's better. Reporters = idiots (Brit Hume excepted).
Are there any ice fisherman up there in their little shacks and their ice augers? ;)
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