A Dust-Covered Sea of Ice?

On Mars? Maybe! People have wondered whether there might be such a landscape there, especially in the north, where it's unusually flat, but this is the first I've heard about any such landscape near the equator:

"It's been predicted for a long time that you should find water close to the surface of Mars near the equator," Jan-Peter Muller, from University College London, UK, said.

Really? I disagree: I thought there was an irreversible process on Mars whereby equatorial water was being slowly cold-trapped at the poles, leaving the equator dessicated. To be generous, it sure looks like there are dusty ice-shelf cracks there in the image, but perhaps there are alternate explanations: maybe surface appearances deceive and the ice is long-gone, or maybe these are volcanic mesas largely buried in sand. But who knows, right? Let's check it out!


3D images of pack ice near the Martian equator have been taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the Mars Express probe. The detected ground features are reminiscent of fractured ice floes on Earth. (Image: Esa/DLR/Berlin/Neukum, downloaded from BBC.)