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The south pole of Mars, captured here by NASA, is packed with frozen water deposits. Credit: NASA WASHINGTON: Huge deposits of pure frozen water have been found under the southern pole of Mars, following a probe by the European spacecraft Mars Express. The deposits are so vast that if the ice was to melt completely it would cover the entire Red Planet to a depth of 11 metres. "While the precise composition of the deposits is unknown, it is believed they are predominantly water ice and that they represent the largest known reservoir of H2O on the planet," said the study that reported the find, published today in the U.S. journal Science. Researchers used signals sent by one of Mars Express' instruments, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface Ionospheric Sounding (Marsis), which penetrated some 3.7 kilometres below the planet's surface, to make their calculations. "We apply a technique commonly used to study the interior of ice sheeets and glaciers on Earth, radar echo sounding, to study the south pole layered deposits of Mars," added the study's authors. The same instruments were used in November 2005 to detect underground water for the first time on the planet - that time at the north pole. Earlier this month scientists said in a study published in British journal Nature that they had found evidence that Mars was once latticed by a complex underground water system (see Mars once riddled with deep water, Cosmos Online) proving the planet has had a long and complex relationship with what is thought to be a key ingredient for life. Today, Mars - which like Earth was formed some 4.6 billion years ago - is bone dry, its thin atmosphere almost entirely bereft of water. But most experts now agree that the planet was once covered with seas and a balmy, Earth-like atmosphere, fueling speculation that it could have harboured some form of life, even bacterial. Even more tantalizing, in the light of the Nature study, is recent evidence presented by NASA scientists that some water is still flowing along the surface of Mars, presumably from underground sources. Pictures taken by the U.S. space agency's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter detected two gullies that the scientists said could only have been created by a flow of liquid. The gullies had not existed when the region was photographed previously. Water is one of three essential ingredients for life as we know it, along with energy, such as sunlight, and elements like carbon and oxygen. More information 
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