Massive Subsurface Ice Deposits in Southern Hemisphere, MARSIS results - LPSC 2006 |
Massive Subsurface Ice Deposits in Southern Hemisphere, MARSIS results - LPSC 2006 |
Guest_paulanderson_* |
Mar 16 2006, 07:28 PM
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#1
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Thanks to Doug for pointing out this LPSC update:
Mars Express: Probing the Depths ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2006/full102.pdf Another good article: Martian Ice: Wide and Deep http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1695_1.asp "More recently, a shift in Mars Express's orbit has allowed MARSIS to probe the planet's south pole. There the buried ice extends down to 3˝ kilometers (2 miles) under the cap in some places. Water ice appears quite transparent at radar wavelengths, and the ease with which MARSIS's signal penetrates the polar terrain suggests that the ice is relatively pure. "There's at most only a few percent of impurities," team coleader Jeffrey Plaut (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) told planetary scientists meeting in Houston this week. Potentially more exciting is MARSIS's discovery that huge quantities of ice may underlie a large plain beyond the southern cap called Dorsa Argentea, which covers 3 million square kilometers, about 2% of the planet's surface. Geologists originally thought Dorsa Argentea was a volcanic plain, but James W. Head III (Brown University) and others recently realized that a broad ice sheet must lie beneath its dusty surface. Plaut reported that MARSIS has found multiple layers stacked beneath Dorsa Argentea to depths of up to 500 meters — and if they’re all ice, they represent a reservoir large enough to cover the entire planet with water to a depth of about 10 meters (30 feet)." |
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Mar 16 2006, 09:15 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 48 Joined: 8-December 05 Member No.: 603 |
While that's great news, I think the comment about covering the whole planet to a depth of 10 meters is a bit misleading. They just took the 500m depth of the deposit and multiplied it by the 2% of the Martian surface that it covers - that gives 10m. If you melted the whole Dorsa Argentea deposit, taking the actual relief of the Martian surface into account, you'd wind up with something like image #9 on Magnus Lundstedt's Water Oceans on Mars page.
Bart |
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Guest_paulanderson_* |
Mar 16 2006, 09:29 PM
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#3
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Guests |
Also:
Big New Reservoir of Water Ice Suspected Under Mars http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/d...under-mars.html |
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Mar 17 2006, 12:40 AM
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#4
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
you'd wind up with something like image #9 on Magnus Lundstedt's Water Oceans on Mars page. Serioius props to Magnus for having a relevant model to put some PR science to the test at just the right time. Also excellent point Bart by the way - excellent use of the material on hand. |
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Guest_paulanderson_* |
Mar 17 2006, 04:53 PM
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#5
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Guests |
Regardless of how much of the surface may be theoretically covered by any melted ice, there is apparently a lot of subsurface ice, both "wide and deep" as New Scientist puts it, a very significant finding... I look forward to MRO's studies.
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Mar 19 2006, 02:48 AM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
'Hourglass'-shaped crater - new video and perspectives
This video and accompanying images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show an unusual flow deposit on the floors of two adjacent impact craters in the eastern Hellas Planitia region, indicating possible glacial processes. Full story at: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM618NVGJE_0.html -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 20 2006, 01:55 AM
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#7
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Guests |
The business about there being lots of ice under Dorsa Argentea is something important that they really did manage to keep under wraps until the actual LPSC conference -- there's not a whisper about it in any of the abstracts.
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Mar 20 2006, 08:04 AM
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#8
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Mariner 7 saw a ragged semi-circular scarp in the south Polar region that I believe corresponds to a degraded and mostly buried impact basin. MOLA data shows it rather well. I wonder if the deepest 3.5 km thicknesses inferred for the dusty ice deposits penetrated by MARSIS are in layered deposits superimposed on the depressed region corresponding to this basin?
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Apr 27 2006, 03:25 AM
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#9
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 17 Joined: 25-April 05 From: Pilsen, CZ, EU Member No.: 363 |
I haven't seen this mentioned on the forum yet - there was very interresting MARSIS lecture by Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, co-PI of MARSIS. link
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Aug 29 2006, 05:48 AM
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#10
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Member Group: Members Posts: 105 Joined: 13-July 05 From: The Hague, NL Member No.: 434 |
I just received the new ESA Bulletin and it is mentioned that "The MARSIS radar has made significant discoveries during the last nighttime season; they will be published shortly"
Let's hope we'll be on the front-row when the discoveries are published. I'm not aware that we have an ESA equivalent of Dr. Stern in our midst but it is never too late of course Peter |
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Oct 16 2006, 01:41 PM
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#11
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Member Group: Members Posts: 105 Joined: 13-July 05 From: The Hague, NL Member No.: 434 |
Time has passed... we now write 16th Oct as the day when a new trickle of info is published:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMADOV74TE_0.html |
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Oct 16 2006, 02:44 PM
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Forum Contributor Group: Members Posts: 1372 Joined: 8-February 04 From: North East Florida, USA. Member No.: 11 |
So there is plenty of water for the heated swimming pools when we colonise the place.
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Oct 16 2006, 03:27 PM
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#13
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
I can appreciate the artistic enhancement that is added in many of these Mars Express images, but that image of Vastitas Borealis is just plain weird looking. Does anyone know if this is an overlay of a MARSIS image? Or just some over-zealous image retouching?
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMADOV74TE_0.html -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Oct 19 2006, 09:59 AM
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#14
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Special Cookie Group: Members Posts: 2168 Joined: 6-April 05 From: Sintra | Portugal Member No.: 228 |
News from OMEGA:
Did I read "geyser"?... -------------------- "Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Alan Poe |
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Oct 19 2006, 12:08 PM
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#15
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Yes, you did...now let's see ME and/or MRO prove it!
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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