PROVIDENCE, R.I., Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Researchers said Wednesday the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecraft have detected evidence of a relatively recent ice age on Mars.
In contrast to Earth's ice ages, the researchers said, similar periods on Mars wax when the planet's poles warm, and wane when the poles cool and lock water into the ice caps.
The factors contributing to Martian ice ages seem to be more extreme than Earth's comparable drivers of climate change. Variations in the planet's orbit and tilt produce substantial changes in the distribution of water ice from the poles down to latitudes equivalent to Houston or Egypt.
The scientists used spacecraft data and analogies to Earth's Antarctic Dry Valleys to prepare their findings, which are reported in the Dec. 18 issue of the British journal Nature.
"Of all the solar system planets, Mars has the climate most like that of Earth," said James Head, a planetary scientist at Brown University and lead author of the research. "Now we're seeing that Mars, like Earth, is in a period between ice ages," he said.
