WATER ON MARS?!

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]In 2001, another spacecraft [music] is sent to orbit Mars.

[00:00:06]Called the 2001 Mars Odyssey, it uses a spectrometer and a thermal imager to detect evidence of water.

[00:00:15]Scientists learned that at both poles there appears to be an abundance of water [music] ice underneath the surface.

[00:00:22]Mars has water in polar ice caps that are hundreds of feet thick. If we were able to melt that water into liquid, that water would be able to cover the surface of Mars to the depth of about 100 ft.

[00:00:33]The 2001 Mars [music] Odyssey also detects what appears to be deposits of water ice near the equator.

[00:00:41]Michael Meyer, a lead scientist of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, says, "The big surprise in the past 15 years of exploration is [music] that the inventory of water on Mars is much greater than we had thought."