Detecting ice holes on Mars

NASA scientists have discovered a dry underground ice pit containing lots of carbon dioxide. These carbon dioxide traps are thought to have originated from Mars's atmosphere for a long time, when it was the constituent element of life on this planet.

'This is a' buried treasure ', said Jeffrey Plaut, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Center , in a report published in the journal Science. 'We found something underground that no one knew that it was there. '

The discovery was made possible by a cross-ground radar system of the Mars Reconnaissance Satellite, which is responsible for tracking the clues of life on the planet, wrote Empowered News .

The latest recorded volume of ice is about 3,000 cubic miles , capable of containing enough carbon dioxide nearly twice the entire volume of Mars atmosphere. The Martian atmosphere has 1% lower surface pressure than the Earth's surface pressure at the lowest elevations. The atmosphere on this planet also contains up to 95% carbon dioxide, while on Earth, carbon dioxide accounts for only 0.04%.

' We know there is a small permanent ice cap containing carbon dioxide on it, but this buried strip has 30 times the amount of ice expected, ' said Roger Phillips, a researcher at Southwest Research in Boulder City. , state of Colombia confirmed. Phillips is the deputy head of the research team at the Mars Reconnaissance Satellite Radar and author of the study.