Ice on Mars

Water-ice has been found in vast quantities just below the surface across great swathes of the planet Mars. Ice shows up blue on the gamma-ray spectrometer The finding by the American space agency Nasa is undoubtedly one of the most important made about the Red Planet. It solves one of its deepest mysteries, points the way for manned exploration and reignites the question of whether life may exist on Mars. Insiders suggest that partly as …

…that they come from hydrogen less than one metre (three feet) beneath the Martian surface. Astronomers believe that the hydrogen is locked up in crystals of ice. Moon discovery The same design of instrument was used on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft that discovered ice in the shadowed regions of the Moon's poles in 1998. Also onboard Mars Odyssey is a neutron spectrometer that registers evidence for underground ice in the same regions of the planet. Researchers