hello p -

My guess is that the water near Mars surface can not exactly be characterized as "easily accessible".

I am also not quite sure how much water there is, but my guess is that it is not "abundant", in the ways that most people use the term.

My assumption right now is that the depleted band around the pole probably shows pretty accurately the amounts found between the surface and a few meters down.

The problem is integrating volume under a cresecent cross section shaped rotational form that also has uncertain values near the pole (axis).

My guess is that the experts will have chewed through the data by about Sunday, with initial comments published by Monday.

EP