There are Deposits of ice at Mercury's Poles too: by BrianKoberlein
Although the Arecibo radio telescope is no more, it continues to deliver scientific discoveries. There is a wealth of Arecibo data astronomers continue to mine for new discoveries, and one of them is thanks to an astronomical technique known as planetary radar.
You’re probably familiar with radar as it’s used in weather forecasts, or when you’re caught speeding on the highway. Radar works by beaming a radio signal at an object. Some of the radio light bounces back, and from the return signal, you can tell things such as how distant an object is and where it is moving. Planetary radar involves beaming a radio signal at a planet, then picking up the scattered signal with a sensitive radio telescope.
Then 2019 Arecibo beamed a powerful radio signal toward Mercury. The scattered signal was captured by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, allowing astronomers to make a detailed radio map of Mercury, including polar regions where there are ice pockets. In this latest study, this data was combined with data from the Messenger spacecraft, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.The Messenger spacecraft used laser mapping to distinguish bright regions of ice from darker regolith regions.
In addition to further confirming Mercury’s polar ice, the study also lays the groundwork for radar maps of other worlds. For example, there is a great deal of interest in the location of water ice on the Moon, which would be extremely useful for future lunar astronauts. Refined radar maps of the Moon will be able to determine not only the position of lunar ice pockets but also the size and purity of these pockets.
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