- KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Using images sent from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, geologist
Harry Moore has found what may be a major discovery on the red planet's
surface.
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- Moore, supervisor of the geotechnical
engineering section of the Tennessee Department of Transportation and a
member of an international scientific think tank, has located a huge crater
north of the Mars equator that appears to have frozen water ice on its
floor.
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- If Moore's find is accurate, the implications
are significant for future missions to Mars.
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- Moore, 49, and the Society for Planetary
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research, a group of scientists
in the U.S. and Europe, have been studying Mars for more than two decades.
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- Last week, Moore posted the results of
his study in a scientific paper to the American Geophysical Union meeting
in Boston.
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- Essentially what Moore found by studying
the images of the Cydonia region of Mars is a crater whose football field
size floor appears to be wall-to-wall ice. The floor's surface even reflects
on the crater's wall.
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- Moore thinks the ice is frozen water
and not frozen carbon dioxide, which is known to exist south of the Mars
equator.
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- Moore says that while studying the NASA
images (captured in April by the surveyor) he noticed several unusual craters
clustered together north of a large ridge.
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- Four of the craters, he says, had an
"unusual floor surface."
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- They were reflective and seemed to have
"either fluid or some smooth solid on their floors. Being that the
surface temperature on Mars is usually below the freezing boundary for
water, frozen water would be the likely solid if water were present. Molten
rock material would also be a source of fluid," he wrote.
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- Planetary scientists suspect that a tremendous
amount of water covered Mars' surface millions of years ago. It is also
thought that water ice could exist now at very shallow depths in areas
north of the equator.
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- Moore says there are a couple of explanations
for the shiny surface on the crater's floor.
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- The impact of either a meteor or a comet
could have generated enough heat to melt frozen water in the permafrost.
The melted water could then have filled the crater to its current water
table. Or it could have filled in cracks in the bedrock.
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- In Mars' cold, thin atmosphere, it would
not take long for the water to refreeze. Another explanation says Moore
is that a meteor or comet may have penetrated into the Mars crust, cracking
it open and releasing molten material.
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- The molten material would have then flowed
into the crater's floor and solidified.
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- "If this is water ice," Moore
says, "it would help support the idea that the planet was once covered
with water, and water supports life. I'm not going to push it any farther
than that," he says.
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- If the crater's floor is frozen water,
then the ingredients for oxygen, hydrogen and liquid water are present.
If that is the case, it could be possible for future explorers to Mars
to live on the planet.
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- The other significance of Moore's discovery
is that the only other place water ice has been found on Mars is the planet's
north pole. The Moore crater is the southernmost site yet for the possibility
of subsurface ice.
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- Also last week, a NASA consultant released
a photo of a crater 30 miles across with a darker area 12 to 18 miles wide
at the floor.
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- Mike Malin, who designed NASA's cameras
for the Mars surveyor, announced one day before Moore's paper to the geophysical
group that the dark area in the crater 2,400 miles south of the equator
was some sort of frozen mud or sand. This could indicate ice.
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- The Global Surveyor has been in orbit
around Mars since last fall.
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