Perennial water ice identified in the south polar cap of Mars

Jean-Pierre Bibring (), Yves Langevin, François Poulet, Aline Gendrin, Brigitte Gondet, Michel Berthé, Alain Soufflot, Pierre Drossart, Michel Combes, Giancarlo Bellucci, Vassili Moroz, Nicolas Mangold, Bernard Schmitt and the OMEGA Team
Additional contact information
Jean-Pierre Bibring: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Yves Langevin: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
François Poulet: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Aline Gendrin: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Brigitte Gondet: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Michel Berthé: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Alain Soufflot: Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
Pierre Drossart: LESIA, Observatoire de Paris/Meudon
Michel Combes: LESIA, Observatoire de Paris/Meudon
Giancarlo Bellucci: IFSI-INAF
Vassili Moroz: IKI
Nicolas Mangold: OrsayTerre
Bernard Schmitt: Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble

Nature, 2004, vol. 428, issue 6983, 627-630

Abstract: Abstract The inventory of water and carbon dioxide reservoirs on Mars are important clues for understanding the geological, climatic and potentially exobiological evolution of the planet1. From the early mapping observation of the permanent ice caps on the martian poles2,3, the northern cap was believed to be mainly composed of water ice, whereas the southern cap was thought to be constituted of carbon dioxide ice. However, recent missions (NASA missions Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey) have revealed surface structures4, altimetry profiles5, underlying buried hydrogen6, and temperatures of the south polar regions that are thermodynamically consistent with a mixture of surface water ice and carbon dioxide7. Here we present the first direct identification and mapping of both carbon dioxide and water ice in the martian high southern latitudes, at a resolution of 2 km, during the local summer, when the extent of the polar ice is at its minimum. We observe that this south polar cap contains perennial water ice in extended areas: as a small admixture to carbon dioxide in the bright regions; associated with dust, without carbon dioxide, at the edges of this bright cap; and, unexpectedly, in large areas tens of kilometres away from the bright cap.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02461 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:428:y:2004:i:6983:d:10.1038_nature02461

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02461

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().