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phys.org is reporting that researchers working with radar data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) [flash required] have determined that belts of glaciers away from the poles are primarily composed of water ice.
What is more, researchers from the Neils Bohr Institute have been able to use the radar data and ice flow modelling to calculate the volume of water ice present in the glacier belts.
From the Phys.Org article:
Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water. New studies have now calculated the size of the glaciers and thus the amount of water in the glaciers. It is the equivalent of all of Mars being covered by more than one meter of ice. The results are published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
Several satellites orbit Mars and on satellite images, researchers have been able to observe the shape of glaciers just below the surface. For a long time scientists did not know if the ice was made of frozen water (H2O) or of carbon dioxide (CO2) or whether it was mud.
Using radar measurements from the NASA satellite, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers have been able to determine that is water ice. But how thick was the ice and do they resemble glaciers on Earth?
A group of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have now calculated this using radar observations combined with ice flow modelling.
Data combined with modelling
"We have looked at radar measurements spanning ten years back in time to see how thick the ice is and how it behaves. A glacier is after all a big chunk of ice and it flows and gets a form that tells us something about how soft it is. We then compared this with how glaciers on Earth behave and from that we have been able to make models for the ice flow," explains Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson, a postdoc at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedBear on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:10PM
The Reg article has another paragraph that states the scientist's estimate is off by an order of magnitude and the glacial ice would actually only cover the entire surface of Mars in 1.1 millimeters of water. Which seems much more believable than these ice remnants being able to cover the entire surface in 1.1 meters of water. Mars is still a very dry planet which started out with relatively shallow seas to begin with and has been losing water vapor to space for a billion years, so how could it still be hiding oceans-worth of water ice right on the surface?
Still, that's a lot of water ice, and makes much more of the relatively warmer mid-latitude surface of the planet (away from the even colder polar zones) suitable for direct colonization, where water wouldn't need to be piped from the poles and there is (relatively) more solar energy available. This is therefore super exciting news either way which completely transforms the plausibility of the very idea of colonizing Mars at all.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ