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....if melted would cover the planet 11 meters deep. Guess that's enough to support a colony 
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Mars Express radar gauges water quantity around Mars’ south pole
15 March 2007
The amount of water trapped in frozen layers over Mars' south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 metres deep covering the planet.
This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the dusty ice by the Mars Express radar instrument that has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which in places is as deep as 3.7 kilometres below the surface.
"The south polar layered deposits of Mars cover an area as wide as a big portion of Europe. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Dr Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena (California), co-Principal Investigator for the radar and lead author of the study.
The instrument, named the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), is also mapping the thickness of similar layered deposits at the north pole of Mars.
"Our radar is doing its job extremely well," said Prof. Giovanni Picardi of the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Principal Investigator for the instrument. "MARSIS is showing to be a very powerful tool to probe underneath the Martian surface, and it's showing how our team's goals - such as probing the polar layered deposits - are being successfully achieved," he continued. "Not only MARSIS is providing us with the first ever views of Mars' subsurface at those depths, but the details we are seeing are truly amazing. We are expecting even greater results when we will have concluded an on-going, sophisticated fine-tuning of our data processing methods. These should enable us to understand even better the surface and subsurface composition."
Polar layered deposits hold most of the known water on modern Mars, though other areas of the planet appear to have been very wet at times in the past. Understanding the history and fate of water on Mars is a key to studying whether Mars has ever supported life, because all known life depends on liquid water.
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15 March 2007
The amount of water trapped in frozen layers over Mars' south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 metres deep covering the planet.
This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the dusty ice by the Mars Express radar instrument that has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which in places is as deep as 3.7 kilometres below the surface.
"The south polar layered deposits of Mars cover an area as wide as a big portion of Europe. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Dr Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena (California), co-Principal Investigator for the radar and lead author of the study.
The instrument, named the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), is also mapping the thickness of similar layered deposits at the north pole of Mars.
"Our radar is doing its job extremely well," said Prof. Giovanni Picardi of the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Principal Investigator for the instrument. "MARSIS is showing to be a very powerful tool to probe underneath the Martian surface, and it's showing how our team's goals - such as probing the polar layered deposits - are being successfully achieved," he continued. "Not only MARSIS is providing us with the first ever views of Mars' subsurface at those depths, but the details we are seeing are truly amazing. We are expecting even greater results when we will have concluded an on-going, sophisticated fine-tuning of our data processing methods. These should enable us to understand even better the surface and subsurface composition."
Polar layered deposits hold most of the known water on modern Mars, though other areas of the planet appear to have been very wet at times in the past. Understanding the history and fate of water on Mars is a key to studying whether Mars has ever supported life, because all known life depends on liquid water.
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