Nasa to head for Mars after water is found everywhere

NASA IS poised to announce its firmest plans yet to send men to Mars within 20 years, following the stunning discovery of huge quantities of water-ice close to the planet's surface.

The presence of frozen water is the main finding sent to Earth by the joint US-Russian Odyssey spacecraft, which entered Martian orbit in October 2001. In a paper for the journal Science, two scientists in Los Alamos involved with the mission will present evidence that ice lies about a metre beneath the surface over a large area.

There were "features that suggest water, or something like water, everywhere," Bob Reedy, one of the authors, told the Albuquerque Journal last week. "Yet today there's no water on the surface. Where did all that water go?"

This week Jim Garvin, the head of the US space agency's Mars exploration programme is expected to announce that, on the basis of the existence of accessible water on the planet, his agency is aiming to make a manned landing there within the next 20 years.

The lack of water has long been a huge obstacle to men carrying out the nine-month, 40-million-mile journey to Mars. But confirmation of the buried icepacks could solve the problem – as well as rekindle the debate about whether life existed there.

The discovery of water was made by gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers which measure gamma-ray emanations and other evidence of the presence of hydrogen. Scientists believe the hydrogen is locked inside crystals of ice. The paper submitted by Mr Reedy and his colleague Bill Feldman will provide the most detailed map yet of the chemical composition of Mars' surface.

Water would provide not only drinking supplies. The hydrogen inside could be extracted to provide fuel for a spacecraft's return journey.