By Ron Cowen
There’s ice in them thar hills!
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/9222.jpg?resize=300%2C260&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/9223.jpg?resize=300%2C204&ssl=1)
Using radar from an orbiting spacecraft to penetrate the hidden recesses of Mars, planetary prospectors have uncovered vast reserves of water-ice buried beneath rocky debris. The ice resides in hilly sections of the Red Planet’s southern and northern mid-latitudes and amounts to the largest reservoir of frozen water outside of Mars’ polar regions. The ice could be equal to as much as 10 percent of the volume of frozen water in the planet’s polar ice caps.
The concealed deposits, referred to as glaciers because they appear to have inched along the subsurface of the planet in the past, could be a valuable resource for future visitors — supplying drinking water or hydrogen fuel, notes Jack Holt of the University of Texas in Austin. Preserved beneath about 10 meters of dust and rocky debris, the deposits may also provide a pristine record of the Martian climate and atmosphere several hundred million years ago, when these glaciers were likely to have formed.