On March 18^th 2004, Nature magazine revealed that Mars Express borer’s analysis proved that the south pole of the red planet was covered by a big quantity of ice.

Launched from Baïkonour center on June 2^nd 2003 with a Russian rocket, Mars Express was to allow the British module Beagle 2 to study the Martian ground. Since its dropping on December 19^th , Beagle 2 did not give any sign of life and, since the end of January it has been considered by scientists as definitely lost. The purpose of this European operation is the search for pockets of water, one of Mars’s mysteries. Nowadays, Mars Express continues only this mission.

With a spectral imager in the visible and the infrared, named OMEGA (Observatory for mineralogy, water, ice and activity), made in France, Jean-Pierre Bibring and his colleagues from the European Space Agency noticed that the south pole of March was composed of 3 zones. In the centre, there is an icecap which contains carbon dioxide (CO2) mixed with a little water. A band of water (almost pure) surrounds this icecap. And finally approximately 12 kilometres around there is a zone of "impure" ice-cold water.

This discovery confirms the presence of water and allows to discover the true face of the red planet. The objectives of the European and American missions are almost reached.

But it is only the beginning of Martian exploration!!

Karst-like structures

Plateau region in perspective

The ESA website: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=1 .

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The evidence would have been brought by images of Total Mars Surveyor, which would show a source of dark water in the central part of Vallis Marineris, but the NASA has for the moment refused to comment on these results, indicating that they comprised errors. Scientists suspect the presence of water on Mars, in particular because of the relief marked by what resembles extremely a massive flow of a liquid, having dug geologies. However, because of the temperature which prevails, which combines an average temperature of -53°C at night with a strong heat during the day (30°C under the equator), the liquid presence of water seems difficult to detect elsewhere than in craters. This phenomenon of transformation of the solid state into a gas state, without passing by the liquid state, is called sublimation and the transformation of the gas state into a solid state is called condensation.

Aurore (LAT Blois)