Mars Express goes underground
10:00:50
Since it deployed its antenna last June, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding instrument - MARSIS - on ESA's Mars Express orbiter has been providing unprecedented data on what lies beneath the surface of the red planet.
10:01:06
The European Space Agency has presented the first MARSIS science results published in the magazine Science. They show that the radar can penetrate to depths of several kilometres, revealing - in one location - the presence of thick deposits of near pure water-ice.
10:01:22
A basin, 250 km in diameter and buried 2.5 km deep, has also been discovered. Embedded in the structure, probably an impact crater, is a thick volume of ice-rich material.
10:01:36
Science teams say MARSIS has fully demonstrated its capabilities and holds much promise - for a better understanding of Mars, and in many fields in planetary geology.
-
10:01:48
Similar to radars on Earth, MARSIS bounces radio waves over selected areas, and then rece