"Significant water ice deposits easily accessible on the surface of the planet would benefit any future Mars mission astronauts and make it much more likely that life might have existed on the planet.

NASA scientists said they were excited by the initial indications of hydrogen deposits, describing the readings sent back as clearer, more definite and much earlier than had been expected.

``We were expecting that it would take many orbits (to determine the presence of hydrogen),'' said Stephen Saunders, a scientist on the Odyssey project. ``But we saw it the very first time.''

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Damn, Mars may just be colonizable after all. Kinda ruins Ed's day."

This has little to do with colonization of Mars. We are all rather certain that there is water ice at Mars' pole. And I believe that's what the instrument was in fact detecting. What's exciting is that the instrument works (and works well) and in the future will be able to accurately find water deposts all over the Martian surface (less than 1 meter below the surface). The extent in which they are found will give us some definite clues about possiblity of life on Mars.
Also what I find exciting is that since this was same instrument that detected water deposits on the Moon it will provide comparable data to Lunar Prospector's results.
-gb