Los Alamos releases new maps of Mars water:

Los Alamos releases new maps of Mars water
Contact: Nancy Ambrosiano, nwa@lanl.gov, (505) 667-0471 (03-101)

Contact: Jim Danneskiold, jdanneskiold@lanl.gov, (505) 667-1640

"LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 24, 2003 -- 'Breathtaking' new maps of likely sites of water on Mars showcase their association with geologic features such as Vallis Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system.
The maps detail the distribution of water-equivalent hydrogen as revealed by Los Alamos National Laboratory-developed instruments aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft. In an upcoming talk at the Sixth International Conference on Mars at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Los Alamos space scientist Bill Feldman and coworkers will offer current estimates of the total amount of water stored near the Martian surface. His presentation will be at 1:20 p.m., Friday, July 25.
For more than a year, Los Alamos' neutron spectrometer has been carefully mapping the hydrogen content of the planet's surface by measuring changes in neutrons given off by soil, an indicator of hydrogen likely in the form of water-ice. The new color maps are available at http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/photos/mars.shtml online.
'The new pictures are just breathtaking, the water-equivalent hydrogen follows the geographic features beautifully,' said Feldman. 'There's a lane of hydrogen-rich material following the western slopes of the biggest volcanoes in the solar system, a maximum reading sits right on Elysium mons, and another maximum is in the deepest canyon in the solar system.'"
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