WHILE Mars shows off its rusty face in the evening sky this
month—during its closest approach to Earth in more than a
decade—images captured by the Mars Orbiter Camera suggest that ground ice
was present in the Red Planet’s soil only 10 million years ago. That’s just a
moment ago in geological terms.
The pictures suggest that there were once ice deposits near Mars’s equator,
probably no more than 5 metres below the surface. “If ground ice was present
within 5 metres of the surface only a few million years ago, it is very likely
to persist today…
