This map shows the abundance of water ice around the northern polar regions on Mars. Purple and blue indicate lots of water, while yellow and red indicate drier regions. The ice-rich region at the North Pole is the North Polar Ice Cap on Mars. Other areas have smaller amounts of ice buried a few inches beneath the soil. The Mars Odyssey Orbiter spacecraft detected gamma rays from hydrogen atoms in the water molecules in 2002 to make this map.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/UA.

This map shows how much water ice is found near the North Pole on Mars. Purple and blue areas have lots of water ice. Yellow and red areas don't have much ice. Like Earth, Mars has a large polar ice cap. The purple and blue area near the center is the ice cap. Other areas have smaller amounts of ice buried a few inches beneath the soil. The Mars Odyssey Orbiter spacecraft collected this data in 2002.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/UA.

Mars is a pretty cold planet. Like Earth, Mars has a large ice cap at each of its poles. This picture shows water ice around the North Pole on Mars (Mars is so cold that it has dry ice made from carbon dioxide in some places, too!). The purple and blue areas near the middle of the map show where the polar ice cap is. Some places around the North Pole have smaller amounts of ice buried under a few inches of soil. Those places are shown in green. The red and yellow areas don't have very much ice at all. The Mars Odyssey Orbiter spacecraft collected the data that was used to make this map in 2002.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/UA.

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