Planet Mars' Utopia Planitia Has A Massive Underground Of Frozen Water

By Mary Lourd - 26 Nov '16 18:46PM

A massive underground of buried ice makes up a large region of the planet Mars about halfway from the equator to the north pole. This recent discovery reveals that there is a vast possible resource for future astronauts exploring the red planet.

The data gathered by 600 MRO radar while orbiting the planet indicates the deposit is between 39 and 49 degrees north latitude. It either contains about as much as in Lake Superior or the largest of the Great Lakes here on Earth, which holds 2,900 cubic miles of the water deposit.

Mars' Utopia Planitia region was examined by NASA's orbiter ground penetrating Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument. The study focused on the features of Utopia Planitia's "scalloped depression" and the research was led by Cassie Stuurman of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas.

SHARAD is one of the six instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which began its journey 10 years ago.

The frozen ice layer lies in the mid-northern latitude and extensively covered a greater area than the state of New Mexico. The estimated measure is about 3 feet to 33 feet (1 to 10 meters) of soil. It said that the water sublimes into water vapor which it cannot persist in the thin and dry atmosphere of the planet today.

NASA confirmed that the ice deposit has a composition of 50 to 85 percent of water ice and a mixture of larger rocky particles and dust. It ranges from about 260 feet to about 560 feet (80 meters to about 170 meters) in thickness.

In the Journal Geophysical Research Letters, Stuurman wrote, "The deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted than it is today."

The red planet has an axial tilt of 25 degrees to about 50 degrees over a 120,000-year cycle, which explains that it holds huge amounts of water ice at the poles. Further study of the Utopia Planitia could also provide us clues on how the Martian climate has changed over the ages.