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Jul 31, 2018
Layers of the South Pole of Mars
Image Credit & Copyright: License ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; Bill Dunford
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Layers of the South Pole of Mars
Image Credit & Copyright: License ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; Bill Dunford
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
What lies beneath the layered south pole of Mars?
A recent measurement with
ground-penetrating radar from ESA's
Mars Express satellite
has detected a bright reflection layer
consistent with an underground lake of
salty water.
The reflection comes from about 1.5-km down but covers an area 200-km across.
Liquid water evaporates quickly from the surface of
Mars, but a briny
confined lake, such as implied by the radar reflection, could last much longer and be a candidate to host life such as
microbes.
Pictured, an
infrared, green, and blue image of the south pole of Mars taken by Mars Express in 2012 shows a complex mixture of
layers of dirt,
frozen carbon dioxide, and
frozen water.
