View Related Images PASADENA, Calif. -- Data from NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter have helped scientists solve a pair of
mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information
about climate change on the Red Planet. The Shallow Radar, or
SHARAD, instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct
the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on
the northern ice cap of Mars. The findings appear in two papers
in the May 27 issue of the journal Nature. "SHARAD is giving us
a beautifully detailed view of ice deposits, whether at the
poles or buried in mid-latitudes, as they changed on Mars over
the last few million years," said Rich Zurek, Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter project scientist at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On Earth, large ice
sheets are shaped mainly by ice flow. According to this latest
research, other forces have shaped, and continue to shape, polar
ice caps on Mars. The northern ice cap is