Young Mars Crater Contains Water Ice, Photo Shows

[jason]

A fresh crater on Mars has revealed a hidden cache of frozen water in some of the latest photos from a powerful NASA spacecraft.
A recent false color image from NASA's  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter clearly shows a patch of Mars water ice at the bottom of a 20-foot (6-meter) wide crater in the Martian surface. The photo came from the orbiter's high-resolution HiRISE camera. [Photo of the young Mars crater.]
The young crater is in the northern hemisphere of Mars. Scientists suspect it formed only recently, sometime between April 2004 and January of this year, said Nathan Bridges, a HiRISE science team member at the University of Arizona.
Bridges said the icy crater is farther south than some other sightings of buried water ice. Â It appeared in one of hundreds of Mars photos taken between June 6 and July 7 of this year.
 "It's showing we're getting ice pretty far south," Bridges said. "As we continue to look at these things it's a good way to determine where shallow ice is on Mars."Â



more Young Mars Crater Contains Water Ice, Photo Shows - Yahoo! News

 

[johnny]

I am always amazed and the new things that scientist discover. Even after hundreds of thousands of years Mars has ice on it that have survived the heat.

 

[intent]

What does it mean?

I can not help but wonder what it means. Mars has ice which is pretty amazing but why? And with having water what are the chances of having microscopic life on mars?

 

[Georgetown]

Where there is water, there is life. I don't really think it matters where the water is or where it comes from,water is water. Who knows, maybe we planted it there 40 years ago.

 

[Eoin]

I still don't understand how they can tell. I mean, you would need to be pretty close up to it to tell. But I guess the Mars Rover would be able to get pretty close.