Radar probes frozen water at Martian pole
By Ron Cowen
If all the frozen water stored near the south pole of Mars suddenly melted, it would make a planetwide ocean 11 meters deep. That’s what planetary scientists have concluded using data from a Mars-orbiting spacecraft that bounced radio waves off the Red Planet’s south polar region.
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The finding confirms previous studies showing that the poles of Mars contain the largest known reservoirs of water on the planet. It also provides a more accurate assessment of the frozen, layered deposits at the south pole, Jeff Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues report in an upcoming Science.