NASA announced today that its Messenger spacecraft has discovered “compelling” evidence of frozen water and possible organic materials on Mercury’s north pole (shown left in red), confirming the decades of suspicion in the scientific community.

“The neutron data indicate that Mercury’s radar-bright polar deposits contain, on average, a hydrogen-rich layer more than tens of centimeters thick beneath a surficial layer 10 to 20 centimeters thick that is less rich in hydrogen,” according to David Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins University physics scientist working on the Messenger project.