NASA Messenger: Mercury Water Ice Encourages Search for Alien Life

All of the larger polar deposits are located on the floors or walls of impact craters. 

Deposits farther from the pole are seen to be concentrated on the north-facing sides of craters. Image released Nov. 28, 2012. 

CREDIT: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Carnegie Institution of Washington/ National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory 

The discovery of huge amounts of water ice and possible organic compounds on the heat-blasted planet Mercury suggests that the raw materials necessary for life as we know it may be common throughout the solar system, researchers say.

Mercury likely harbors between 100 billion and 1 trillion metric tons of water ice in permanently shadowed areas near its poles, scientists analyzing data from NASA's Messenger spacecraft announced Thursday (Nov. 29).

Life on sun-scorched Mercury remains an extreme longshot, the researchers stressed, but the new results should still put a spring in the step of astrobiologists around the world.

"The more we examine the solar system, the more we realize it's a soggy place," Jim Green, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said during a press conference today.

"And that's really quite exciting, because that means the amount of water that we have here on Earth — that was not only inherent when it was originally formed but probably brought here — that water and other volatiles were brought to many other places in the solar system," Green added.

"So it really bodes well for us to continue on the exploration, following the water and its signs throughout the solar system." [Latest Mercury Photos from Messenger]