image: Perspective view of a mountain in the eastern Hellas region of Mars surrounded by a lobate deposit with flow textures on the surface. Recent measurements from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter SHARAD radar sounder have detected large amounts of water ice in similar deposits, arguing for the flow of glacial-like structures on Mars in the relatively recent geologic past. This suggests that snow and ice accumulated on the slope face and flowed viscously over the neighboring plains and is now protected from sublimation by a layer of rock debris and dust. Image is 36 km (23 miles) across. Topographic data shown here was acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express spacecraft. This image relates to an article that appeared in the Nov. 21, 2008, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. John Holt and colleagues at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, was titled "Radar Sounding Evidence for Buried Glacier in the Southern Mid-Latitudes of Mars." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of ESA/DLR/FU Berlin