On the slopes of Martian mountains and craters clings what appears to be flowing honey, coated in dust and frozen in time. In reality, these features are incredibly slow-moving glaciers, and their contents were once thought to be mostly rock enveloped in some ice.

Extract…

While Mars may be a desiccated place where water no longer flows, the planet still has glaciers slowly moving across its surface. Previously, it was thought that Martian glaciers were pure ice with a thin cover of rock and dust. But after 20 years of exhaustive research, scientists have concluded that glaciers all over the planet contain more than 80% water ice, meaning they are nearly pure. These findings could alter our understanding of Mars’ climate history and have significant implications for future crewed missions dependent on in-situ resource utilization (ISRU)…

  • gandalf_der_12teM
    4·
    5 months ago

    Very interesting!

    • what latitude are these glaciers?
    • what altitude are these glaciers?

    The article says it’s 30° to 50° latitude, both north and south.

    • paulhammond5155@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      what altitude are these glaciers?

      They mention the use of MOLA data to establish the ground position… However I’ve not found any mention of the actual MOLA elevations for any of the points measured.