“Based on rough estimates, it’s about 150,000 metric tons of water ice, the equivalent of 60 Olympic swimming pools,” he said.
The volcanoes are near the Mars equator, the warmest area of the planet, which makes a water discovery particularly intriguing, Valantinas said.
“Mars is a desert planet, but there’s water ice in the polar caps, and there’s water ice in the midlatitudes.
Now we also have water frost in the equatorial regions, and equatorial regions are quite dry in general.
“If the frost on these volcanoes is confirmed to be water (and not carbon dioxide), it would be surprising,” he said.
Persons:
Adomas Valantinas, ”, Ceraunius, Valantinas, CaSSIS, ” Valantinas, “, Mars, John Bridges, ” Bridges, Taylor Perron, Cecil, Ida Green, Perron
Organizations:
CNN, Olympus, NASA, JPL, Brown University, University of Bern, Nature Geoscience, University of Bern’s, European Space Agency, Orbiter, ESA Mars Express, Stereo, Mars, ESA, University of Leicester, Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Locations:
—, Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Switzerland, Ascraeus, Russian, CaSSIS, United Kingdom