http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/mars-radar-could-find-water-nasa-20100404-rlsy.html
Mars radar could find water: NASA April 5, 2010 ALEXANDRIA: Technology used to discover underground ice on Mars could also be used in the search for water on Earth, a NASA scientist says. A probe launched by the US space agency discovered in 2007 that the desert that covers Mars sat on enough frozen water to submerge the Red Planet. The same radar technology should be used in the vast deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, a scientist, Essam Heggy, told a water conference in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. ''We [in the region] are best placed to use this technology,'' Dr Heggy told participants at the United Nations Development Program-sponsored conference. The equipment, dubbed Marsis, consists of a radar sounder with a 40-metre antenna fitted to an orbiter that is able to bounce radio waves 3.7 kilometres beneath the surface of Mars. Dr Heggy said the technology could detect water up to a kilometre beneath the dense deserts that covered much of the Middle East and North Africa and which experts say threaten to consume more land in the next century. Scans taken by NASA showed an especially arid region of Darfur in Sudan sat on top of 6000-year-old valleys and lakes. The ''water that was at the surface is now on the subsurface level'', said Dr Heggy, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Middle Eastern countries, which include the world's largest oil exporters, spent more on oil discovery than any other region but devoted the least amount of funds to water exploration, Dr Heggy said. ''Water has no substitute,'' he said. ''But still we're not looking for it.'' Agence France-Presse
