However, the director of NASA's Mars exploration program disputed the Europeans' claim that their discovery was new.
"Our Odyssey spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2001 did discover vast amounts of frozen water in the northern and southern latitudes. And we were surprised by the fact that there was so much, and so close to the surface," Orlando Figueroa, director of NASA's Mars exploration program, told CNN on Friday.
"So it's not new news but we are happy to see that their satellite is also able to pick up where it exists," he said when asked about the Mars Express findings.