Stunning Discovery: Equatorial Relict Glacier Uncovered on Mars - SciTechDaily

During the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that took place in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists announced a groundbreaking discovery of a relict glacier located near the equator of Mars.

This glacier is located in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus at coordinates 7° 33′ S, 93° 14′ W, and its discovery is a significant indication of the presence of surface water ice on Mars in recent history, even close to the equator.

Typically, LTDs consist mainly of light-colored sulfate salts, but this deposit also shows many of the features of a glacier, including crevasse fields and moraine bands.

And where some of the volcanic materials came in contact with glacier ice, chemical reactions would have taken place at the boundary between the two to form a hardened layer of sulfate salts,” explains Sourabh Shubham, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology, and a co-author of the study.

“Glaciers often present distinctive types of features, including marginal, splaying, and tic-tac-toe crevasse fields, and also thrust moraine bands and foliation.

Lee and his co-authors hypothesize a similar situation to explain how sulfate salts on Mars might be able to offer protection to otherwise sublimation-vulnerable ice at low latitudes on the planet.