A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars is using the most powerful cameras ever pointed at the Red Planet to study its climate cycles, scientists at the space administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Monday.

Images taken during a test of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's instruments showed clay-rich areas that could have supported life and frost, and layered deposits of ice and dirt at the polar ice cap indicate "dynamic climate changes" as recently as 100,000 years ago, scientist Scott Murchie said.

"We are seeing a new Mars," project scientist Richard Zurek said at a news conference.

Launched in August 2005, the orbiter dropped into a low orbit around Mars last month to map the planet's subsurface minerals, monitor its atmosphere and look for evidence of enough subsurface ice or water to process into oxygen, concrete and rocket fuel for manned exploration.

The Mars orbiter has the most advanced and powerful instruments of four science satellites circling the planet and will return more than 10 times the quantity of data during its two-year mission than all the other probes combined.

The super high-resolution photographs, snapped from 289.7 kilometres above the planet's surface and showing chair-sized details, show how water carved the arid planet's landscape into fan-shaped soil deposits, deep cut chasms and gullies and layers of ice and dust.

In the Mawrth Vallis region near Mars' midsection, spectrometry of the eroded surface revealed clay deposits that formed in a variety of wet conditions such as standing water and streams, Murchie said.

The conditions could have given rise to micro-organic life on ancient Mars, Murchie said.

The orbiter's cameras also recorded melting frost in the folds of gullies and hummocks near the edge of the Terra Sirenum crater in Mars' southern hemisphere.

"This is something that formed over a number of events. Water flowed in this area and was geologically recent. The water dates from the current geological age," mission scientist Alfred McEwan said.

Images of Chasma Boreale, a valley that cuts deeply into the northern polar cap, showed layers of ice and dirt whose composition varied widely, a sign of radical climate change.

China Daily