So it turns out that Mars has more than it's fair share of ice ages. 40 significant ones in the past 5 million years. Which doesn't seem like that much untill you compare this with the earths yeild: 3 in the past billion. (I'm aware that this may be slightly skewed as these are two different sources and their criteria for "significant" might be a little different).
This frequent freezing seems to have something to do with the extreme wobbles in Mars' rotational axis. As the different portions of the planet are bombarded by larger or small percentages of the suns rays due to these wobble it makes for exremem shifts in the amount of ice under or near the surface of the planet. The earth doesn't have this effect because the gravitational pull of the moon keeps our axis relatively wobble free.
There are a few things that make this interesting:
1. The fact that water/ice is having cycles means that there might be more ice in areas less close to the pole. This means that we don't have to be as exact in our mars landings.
2. It also gives ome insight into how Mars, which was originally very similar to earth, might have made the detour in to the frozen dirt ball that is now (I mean no offence to Mars, but in comparison to earth? It's what it is.)
The rest of the article, "Wobbles of Mars Produced 40 Ice Ages" it's a quick interesting read.
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