Mars' southernmost ice region is very deep and wide

Recent measurements of Mars's southern polar region indicate that this region contains a large amount of frozen water. The amount of freezing water that this area contains can cover this planet with a layer of water about 11 meters deep. These data are a collaboration between NASA and the Italian space agency, which is based on the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe.

This new estimate comes from drawing a map of the thickness of the ice. The radar device of the Mars Express probe has made more than 300 virtual cuts through Mars' southernmost covering sediment to draw a map of the ice. This radar has seen the bottom of this ice sheet, thereby calculating the depth of this ice is 3.7 km.

Jeffrey Plaut, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Said "Mars's southernmost sediment has a larger area than Taxes." The amount of water it contains has been previously estimated but its accuracy is not equal to the data that this radar obtains'. Jeffrey Plaut is the principal investigator on radar equipment and is the lead author of a new report on these findings. These findings were published in the March 15 issue of the electronic journal Science.

The map shows the thickness of the southernmost deposits of Mars.This sediment contains mostly ice and is demonstrated by the MARSIS device used for visits due to the depth of the subsurface and the ionosphere on Mars (Photo by NASA / JPL / ASI / ESA / Univ. Of Rome / MOLA Science Team / USGS)

The radar device is called MARSIS (modern radar device used to measure the depth of the subsurface layer and the ionosphere of Mars). The device is also working on mapping the thickness of the same sediment layer in the northernmost part of Mars.

Giovanni Picardi, professor of La Sapienza University in Italy's capital Rome and the principal investigator on radar equipment, said: 'Our radar is working very well. MARSIS equipment is proving to be a very effective tool to explore the part beneath the surface of Mars and it is also showing that we are achieving many of our goals including the exploration targets. sediment in the polar regions of Mars. Not only did the unprecedented images of the Martian depths that MARSIS provided made us surprised that even the details we were seeing made us very surprised. We hope to achieve even greater results once we make conclusions about the ongoing fine tuning of our data processing methods. These will help us better understand the components that make up the surface and the layer below Mars's surface. '

Polar deposits have contained most of what is now known as Martian water even though other parts of the planet seem to be very wet in the past. Understanding the history and fate of water on Mars is the key to understanding whether life ever existed on this Mars because all the life forms we know depend on water. .

The layers of polar sediments stretch out and lie under a polar cap consisting of CO ₂ frozen and water at the southern end of Mars . Dust has blackened many of these sediments. However, the intensity of the feedback waves that radar receives from the rocky surface under these sediments suggests that the composition of these sediments consists of 90% solidified water. An area with very special light reflection from the bottom of the sediment layer has made it impossible for researchers to explain. It looked like a thin layer of water, but the environmental conditions here were too cold, so there was no possible presence of melted water.

Surveying the shape of the ground surface under the ice will provide more information about the components behind Mars. Plaut explained, 'Actually, we still don't know the depth of the sediment. Now that we understand one thing, the shell is not suppressed by the weight of the ice like it is on earth. The crust and upper part of Mars's shell is harder than the earth's crust perhaps because the inner core of Mars is colder than the earth. '

MARSIS is a device attached to the Mars Express probe of the European space agency. It was developed by the Italian Space Agency and NASA under the supervision of La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy and in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Iowa.

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