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Umm...here you are getting into areas outside my expertise, although I will say that I doubt Mars would be in its particular orbit if it had an icy core - just not dense enough. I suspect that once we establish good seismic stations we will find that Mars has a small core, similar to the Earth's...with very little, if any, seismic activity.

As far as the white stuff being permafrost...you ever seen permafrost or tried to dig through it? Pretty tough stuff. I think we are looking at minerals.

It does look like a mineral deposit of some kind, but unless I'm seeing incorrectly it looks like traces of a similar white substance in the pics from Opportunity in post 156. That post features a great shot of those curious, round clumps everyone's been wondering about as well.

(Not to go "Close Encounters" about those clumps but they DO look SO familiar...remind me of...something...Something from long ago when I was a kid and dug in the dirt...something >kinda< important. LOL)

An experiment that would be visually interesting but probably not of much scientific value would be to have a camera attached to a small box. Dig up some Martian soil, put it in the box, gently bring it up to say 40-60 degrees F (initially - higher later) then watch what happens, as well as test for the release of gases.

Might also have been interesting to mix with some solvent, Earth water. Or just dig a trench, warm it, squirt some water into it and let it go back to ambient temp. That way we could see what water looks like on that far away world.

Of course none of the above are maritan - environmentally friendly.

prisoner6

I suspect that once we establish good seismic stations we will find that Mars has a small core, similar to the Earth's...with very little, if any, seismic activity.

I'm not a geologist, but my WAG theory of why we have tectonic plates moving around on a soft mantle is because we have oceans, and a moon. The moon keeps the stresses moving, which creates heat, and helps "break up" the surface, and the oceans (due to the moon) provide a massive amount of weight constantly shifting back and forth on a daily basis. Mars, having neither a large moon, or oceans, would therefore have very little sub-surface activity other than the static volcanoes. ("Static" in the sense of standing still over the same underground "stuff", not in the "plasma sparks" sense our no-longer-with-us poster waxed obsessive over.)