Recently, something unusual was spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which according to the NASA scientists are enormous glaciers of water ice that lies beneath a layer of rocky debris.

The scientists, who had been trying to better understand the characteristic of the Martian surface for decades, would be immensely helped by the latest finding.

In order to examine the planet’s surface, a radar instrument was brought in use by the MRO spacecraft that was donated by the Italian Space Agency, for the project. The radio waves bouncing off a layer of material beneath the surface were detected by the instrument. These waves were consistent with what is found in areas covered with water ice glaciers.

The location of the glaciers makes them really interesting to study. They are located in the middle latitudes, far from the planet's polar caps where other signs of water ice have been discovered.

Lead author John W. Holt, of the University of Texas at Austin, reported, “The glaciers observed in this study are in the southern hemisphere, but similar features have been spotted in the same latitude bands in the northern hemisphere. That led us to believe that however the glaciers got there, they're the result of a climate-based phenomenon.”

Moreover, these glaciers are huge too. One of the glaciers is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and is up to a half-mile thick.

John W. Holt concluded, “Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps.”