MESSENGER Probe Finds Strong Evidence of Ice On Mercury (light, Sun, spacecraft)

[plwhit]

Water water everywhere..........

"Just in time for the holiday season, the NASA space probe MESSENGER appears to have all but confirmed the existence of ice at Mercury's north pole. Ice has long been suspected to be hiding in permanently shadowed areas in deep craters at the planet's pole, but new data show several converging lines of evidence (thermal and visible light mapping, radar, neutron emission) that as much as a trillion tons of ice may be buried just centimeters deep under the surface. Scientists also see evidence of organic (carbon-based) molecules as well.

MESSENGER Probe Finds Strong Evidence of Ice On Mercury - Slashdot

And to go along with the above is this:

ORGANICS DISCOVERED ON MERCURY

New results from the MESSENGER spacecraft not only confirm that the planet closest to the sun has ice inside shaded craters near the north pole, but that a thin layer of very dark organic material seems to be covering a good part of the frozen water.



http://news.discovery.com/space/orga...ry-121129.html

[Glitch]

Actually, it was more than just "suspected to be hiding in permanently shadowed areas in deep craters at the planet's pole." We have known there was ice in those permanently shadowed areas since 1975. The Mariner 10 (a.k.a. Mariner Venus/Mercury 73) probe made three passes of Mercury in 1974 and 1975. It could only take photographs, and could not penetrate Mercury's surface.

NASA - NSSDC - Spacecraft - Details

What is new information, that we did not know before now, is that there is sub-surface water-ice on Mercury. Although, since Mercury only faces one side toward the sun, it does seem reasonable that there would be water-ice on Mercury's dark side.