According to a new study Mars has vast glaciers hidden under aprons of rocky debris near mid-latitude mountains. Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal “Science” that a layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age.

The ice resides in hilly sections of the Red Planet’s southern and northern mid-latitudes and amounts to the largest reservoir of frozen water outside of Mars’ polar regions. The ice could be equal to as much as 10 percent of the volume of frozen water in the planet’s polar ice caps.

The discovery was made using ground-penetrating radar on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and it offers new possibilities in the search for life on the red planet. "If there is life on Mars, this kind of ice would likely preserve ancient organisms and DNA," researcher Jim Head, a planetary geoscientist at Brown University, told Wired.com. "Examining the water ice could give you a good sample to try to detect if there had been life there."

Researchers involved in the study also explained the glaciers are likely to contain a frozen record of the Martian climate several million years ago. Because water is one of the primary requirements for life, scientists said the frozen reservoirs are an encouraging sign of extra-terrestrial life. Scientists on the 12-member research team surmise that the frozen water deposits are remnants of a Martian ice age millions of years ago. Nevertheless the gently sloping aprons of material around taller features have puzzled scientists since NASA's Viking orbiters revealed them in the 1970s.