After the excitement of scraping up slivers of what turned out to be ice on Mars this summer, NASA has recently announced that it has discovered vast glaciers hidden under rubble. One of them is three times the size of Los Angeles and up to a half-mile thick, according to an alert from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The glaciers have been spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which previously sent information about fractures in Mars’ surface that once directed water flows through underground sandstone.

As for Martian ice, it was discovered by the robotic arm of the Mars Lander in June, a discovery that made people hope Mars will be able to support life someday. However, the Mars Lander recently lost power and died on the northern pole of Mars, after spending five months searching for elements that could support life there. The orbiter showed that Mars was once awash in water and this happened as far back as 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. The glaciers were found under blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any other ice discovered so far. The orbiter’s ground-penetrator radar reportedly shows that the glaciers shoot out for dozens of miles, from the base of mountains or cliffs.

Scientists compared the Martian glaciers with the ones that have been found under rocky coverings in Antarctica. It was also suggested that the orbiter spotted what might be even larger glaciers in northern areas of the planet. James W. Head, professor of geological sciences at Brown University, tried to explain how the ice got there in the first place and told the media: "The buried glaciers make sense as preserved fragments from an ice age millions of years ago. On Earth, such buried glacial ice in Antarctica preserves the record of traces of ancient organisms and past climate history."