Scientists have compiled a detailed map of the distribution of water under Mars. And they called it the Great Water Territory!

A message from the European Space Agency (ESA) indicates that astronomers are now preparing publications in

Nature magazine - this will take place in the next few months.

Now among planetary scientists there are two maintheories about the presence of water on mars. On the one hand, in recent years, scientists have found plenty of evidence that Mars used to have water - remnants of glaciers, dried up rivers and even seas. According to calculations, over the past 3.7 billion years, Mars has lost so much water that it would be enough to cover the planet with water 140 m thick. And it is still not clear where it is now and what happened to the planet.

On the other hand, many scientists believe that evenin ancient times, the temperature on the surface of Mars was too low for the ocean to constantly exist on the planet. Probably, the water in the liquid state was on the surface of Mars only during times of volcanic eruptions, scientists say.

We have shown that Mars has several largeabout a third of water ice areas. Two of them are located almost in opposite points of the planet in the northern and southern hemispheres. One of them, located at the zero meridian and equator of the planet, we called the Great Water Territory.

Igor Mitrofanov from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The mission "ExoMars-TGO" involves the creation of a map of the concentration of water in the atmosphere of Mars, its changes, as well as a detailed map of its reserves in the soil.

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Planets

Earlier, the European Space Agency published a photo of the glacier, which occupies almost the entire 80-meter Korolev crater. The picture was taken on the camera of the research apparatus "Mars-Express".