Images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of new impact sites on Mars reveal frozen water just under the surface, NASA reports. Team members from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, held a media teleconference on Thursday discussing the findings. Although water-ice has been detected on Mars previously, most recently by the Phoenix lander, scientists were surprised by the location and purity of the recently discovered ice.

For the past few months, the team has been studying images captured by instruments aboard the MRO, including the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which showed evidence of a material at the bottom of several new craters that “looked a lot like ice,” said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, member of the HiRISE team. At one of these sites, situated between the northern pole and the equator, they found a larger area of bright material and used the MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) to determine its composition. “We saw a beautiful water ice spectral signature; no doubt about it: it was water ice,” said Selby Cull, from the Washington University of St. Louis and part of the CRISM team. During further observations, the ice dissipated at a faster rate than expected, leading them to conclude that the ice was about 99 percent pure, a fact that also took them by surprise. Previously, NASA’s Phoenix Lander had uncovered two kinds of ice with varying purity further north, leading scientists to expect dirtier ice as the norm.

The finding was taken to be a “relic of a previously wetter climate,” said Byrne and sheds light on the more recent changes of the Martian climate, which could point to further understanding of climate change on Earth. Scientists noted that NASA’s Viking 2 spacecraft – one of the earliest successful Mars lander programs – landed about 360 miles from the observed area in 1976. If the soil sampling arm on Viking had been able to dig down just 4 inches deeper it might have hit upon the ice as well. “We would have liked to have had that information about Mars in the last 30 years,” said Selby.

The team found ice exposed within a total of five new craters of depths varying between 1.5 feet and 8 feet. The findings are reported today in the journal Science (subscription required).

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter(LRO) and Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite(LCROSS) are ready to reveal the secrets of the Moon’s south pole. LRO and LCROSS were launched to the Moon together on June 18, 2009. They are the first steps in the Vision for Space Exploration announced by President George W. Bush.

NASA reportsthat LRO has begun detailed mapping of the Moon’s south pole from its 31-mile-high lunar orbit. Initial readings suggest that permanently shadowed areas at the pole may harbor water and hydrogen, but that the rough terrain would be difficult for astronauts to explore. The $540 million orbiter will stay in lunar orbit for at least a year to produce surface, temperature and radiation maps of the Moon, as well as scout for safe landing sites and potential resources for human explorers.

Meanwhile, the LCROSS mission appears to have recovered from problemsencountered in August. Daniel Andres, LCROSS project manager, confirmedSeptember 11 that the spacecraft has enough fuel to accomplish all its mission objectives. The Cabeus A crater at the Moon’s south pole has been selected as the impact point, an event scheduled for October 9, 2009. If executed successfully, LCROSS will measure the properties of the plume of dust – and perhaps ice crystals – caused by the impact of its Centaur upper-stage before colliding with the lunar surface itself four minutes later. Both impacts will be monitored from Earth by a team of astronomers participating in the LCROSS Observation Campaign to maximize the scientific return of the mission.

The National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Space Studies Board published a report, The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon, in 2007 discussing the importance of better understanding the Moon’s polar regions. Scientists theorize that water from comet impacts over the eons may still remain in permanently shadowed areas. A “South Pole-Aitken Basin” lunar mission was one of the top priorities of the 2003 NRC Decadal Survey on solar system exploration, a priority that was further endorsed by the 2007 study.

Read a SpacePolicyOnline.com 1-pager Fact Sheet about LRO and LCROSS.