Its been well known for about 30 years theres water ice there.But most of the ice is actually carbon dioxide ice.And it really annoys me that most of the missions sent to mars are all about finding life rather than doing much other science about the formation and history of mars.I dont beleive there is life on mars i mean life could live off any thing who says it hs to be water and oxegyn?In my opinion it as just as likely that there is life in say venus than there is on mars.
The missions do do a lot of geology and chemistry etc. But its a lot easier to get funding if you tie it in with the search for life. Similarly the press releases are slanted for the public and have lots of ´life' references. Search on arxiv.org and nature to see what real science is going on in the background that does not make the popular press.
Oh and on the ice thing. The reason why this discovery was important is that it shows a permafrost layer just below the surface of the Northern plains. Sure there is plenty of water ice on mars, and even the ice under the plains was known about from the orbital surveys, its the physical scraping away of the the 'topsoil' to physically reveal it thats important. The PR dept in NASA needs a bit of work on reporting these things... Leo Enright did a much better job on Gerry Ryan this morning.
