Icy water plentiful in Mars images

LONDON -- Spectral images from the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter show there is plenty of icy water at the southern pole of Mars, French scientists said yesterday.

Weeks after NASA's Mars rovers uncovered evidence of water on the Red Planet, images from the OMEGA instrument aboard the Mars Express indicate its southern pole has three distinct areas containing water ice.

"We present the first direct identification and mapping of both carbon dioxide and water ice in the Martian high southern latitudes," Jean-Pierre Bibring of the Institut d'Astrophique Spatiale in Orsay, France, said in a report published online by the science journal Nature.

The images were taken at the end of the summer on Mars, so they show that the ice is present all year. Bibring and his colleagues also observed exposed water ice in a region farther from the southern cap, where a large amount of water ice is thought to be buried.

The scientists deciphered the chemical makeup of the pole by studying the amounts of light and heat reflected from the area, allowing them to distinguish dust, carbon dioxide, and water ice.

"All the previous instruments did not have this capability of identifying all the components of what was observed," Bibring said in a telephone interview.

The scientists will also be analyzing data from the northern pole of Mars.

"We will be in the process in the coming months of evaluating the global surface of water and carbon dioxide," Bibring added.

The latest evidence, combined with findings from NASA's rovers, gives scientists more information about whether the conditions to sustain life existed on Mars in the past and whether the planet could support life in the future.

"The answers depend on understanding the past and present distribution of both water and carbon dioxide," Timothy Titus, of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., said in a commentary on the research.

Water would be needed to support a manned mission to the planet.

Determining how much and where the water is located is also necessary to understand Martian climates.

"Human exploration, and ultimate colonization, of Mars depend on accessibility to one resource -- water," said Titus.

"Martian water is necessary not only for human consumption, but is also the key to making breathable air and fuel for the return trip to Earth. For life on Mars, water is the elixir," he
added.