Secrets Of The Icy Sea On Mars

An ocean in deep freeze may hold the key to finding life on Mars, scientists in London said today.

The Elysium sea, a frozen expanse of water 560 miles across, contains ice that was formed within the past five million years.

Today, a team from University College London said that microbes could still be found several metres below the surface, where they may have survived the intense radiation found on the planet’s surface.

“What we really want to find are cells we can thaw out, feed up and grow in the lab. The long-term survival prospect of cells is much better in this frozen sea in Elysium than anywhere else we’ve seen,” said Lewis Dartnell, who led the study, which is published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“The holy grail for astrobiologists is finding a living cell that we can reawaken for studying.”

The frozen ocean, which was discovered in 2005, is just north of the Martian equator, in a region strewn with dormant volcanoes.

The water is believed to have seeped up from fissures beneath the surface, perhaps carrying ancient microbes with it, before freezing some five million years ago.

The study is likely to make Elysium a priority for future Mars missions. [link]