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Title: Space probe finds frozen sea on Mars
Source:
Reuters via SwissInfo
URL Source: http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5559366
Published: Feb 24, 2005
Author: Jeremy Lovell
Post Date: 2005-02-24 06:35:46 by 2Trievers
Keywords: frozen, Space, probe
Views: 81
Comments: 3
LONDON (Reuters) - A European space probe scanning the surface of Mars has discovered what scientists say appears to be a giant frozen sea near the planet's equator. The discovery was the first of a body of what may be water that has been found away from the polar ice caps and was revealed by the Mars Express spacecraft that has been orbiting and photographing the planet for a year. Although the high resolution images only cover an area a few tens of kilometres across, they are in what appears to be a flood plain measuring a massive 800 kilometres long by 900 kilometres wide. The area is covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash, according to the European Space Agency which has published the images on its website www.esa.int. They show a flat plain that is covered with irregular block-like shapes. "They look just like the rafts of fragmented sea ice that lie off the coast of Antarctica on Earth," the ESA website said. It said the water that formed the sea appears to have gushed up from beneath the surface through a series of fractures to form a catastrophic flood in the vast flood plain to an estimated depth of 45 metres. ESA said that as the water froze it broke into blocks which then became covered by an insulating layer of volcanic ash. "Ice is unstable on the surface of Mars because of the low atmospheric pressure, and sublimates away (changes straight from ice to vapour without passing through the liquid state) into the atmosphere," it said. "But some of the ice rafts appear to have been protected by layers of volcanic dust. "While the entire sea froze solid, the unprotected ice between the rafts sublimated to leave 'ice plateaus' surrounded by bare rock," it added. ESA said the relative absence of craters in the plateau suggested that the sea was a modern feature dating back no more than five million years. "Two observations suggest that the ice is still there; first, the submerged craters are too shallow, indicating most of the ice is still in the craters; and second, the surface is too horizontal," it added. ESA is planning to land a mission on Mars within the next five years.
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#1. To: All (#0)
"Frozen Sea" Seen on Mars February 23, 2005—The miles-wide, ice floe-shaped landforms in this new aerial view of Mars may be just that—ancient ice sheets. Noting their similarity to floes at Earth's poles, a team of European scientists speculates that an entire frozen sea is buried intact in this equatorial region. Released today by the European Space Agency, the image was captured by the agency's Mars Express spacecraft. The scientists believe that a catastrophic event five million years ago sent subterranean water gushing onto the Martian surface, creating a sea. The red planet's frigid temperatures quickly turned the sea's surface to ice, which later broke up into the sheets seen buried above. Eventually the sea itself froze, and the entire region was later blanketed by dust, the researchers say. Since Mars was no warmer five million years ago than it is today, the finding bolsters the possibility that water still flows underground here. And where there is water, there is the possibility of life. —Ted Chamberlain
Very cool.
Howzbout you and me opening the first spa on Mars ... they're be no shortage of redmud to mask ...
#2. To: 2Trievers (#0)
#3. To: robin (#2)
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