NASA ‘s new paper provides the most detailed map to date of near – surface water ice on the Red Planet.
So you want to build the foundation of Mars. Where do you start? As with any human settlement, it would be best located near accessible water. Not only will water be essential for the provision of life support, it will be used for everything from agriculture to rocket astronauts that need to return to Earth.
It would be dangerous and dangerous to run that water to Mars. That’s why NASA has been engaging with scientists and engineers ever since 2015 to identify deposits of Martian water ice that may be located inside astronauts on the planet’s surface. But, of course, water has great scientific value, too: If modern microbial life is found on Mars, it would seem to be close to these water sources as well.
New study emerges Astronomy of nature includes a complete map outlining where water ice is most likely and most likely to be found in the northern hemisphere of the planet. Combining 20 years of data from NASA Mars Odyssey, Mars recirculating orbiter, and the now inactive Mars Global Surveyor, the paper is the work of a project called Subsurface Water Ice Mapping, or SWIM. The SWIM effort is led by the Planning Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“The next goal for Mars is for human researchers to get under the surface and look for signs of microbial life,” said Richard Davis, who is in charge of NASA’s efforts to find Martian resources in preparation for sending humans. to the Red Planet. “We realize that we need to make new maps of subterranean ice to help us know where that ice is both for scientific discovery and for astronomers to trust local resources. ”
Soon, NASA plans to hold a workshop for multidisciplinary experts to evaluate human landing sites on Mars based on this research and other scientific and engineering criteria. This mapping project could inform future studies with orbiters that NASA hopes to send to the Red Planet.
NASA recently announced, along with three international space agencies, that it has signed a mission statement exploring the concept of a possible Mars Ice Ice Mapper mission. The statement brings the groups together to establish a joint concept team to assess mission capability as well as partnership opportunities between NASA, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (Italian Space Agency), the Canadian Space Agency, and Japan Aerospace Research Group.
Location, Location, Location
Ask the scientists and engineers of Mars where the most accessible underground ice is, and most marks the area below the polar region of Mars in the northern hemisphere. On Earth, it is in this region that you will find Canada and Europe; on Mars, it includes the fields of Arcadia Planitia and valleys full of glaciers Deuteronilus Mensae.
Regions like this represent a literal middle ground between where you get the most water ice (the poles) and where you get the most light and warmth (the equator). The north-central areas also offer favorable landing elevations. The lower the altitude, the greater the chance of a spacecraft slowing down by using friction from a Martian atmosphere when it comes to the surface. That’s especially important for human-class heavy-duty astronauts, as Mars ’atmosphere is only 1% as dense as Earth’s and thus gives incoming spacecraft fewer showers.
“Eventually, NASA implemented the SWIM project by finding out how close to the equator you can go to find underground ice,” said Sydney Do, Project director Mars Water Mapping at JPL. “Imagine we have drawn a fast line across Mars representing that ice boundary. This data allows us to draw that line with a finer pen instead of a thicker mark and focus on the parts of that line closest to the equator. ”
But it’s not easy to tell if a surface is hiding ice. None of the instrument databases used in the study were designed to measure ice directly, said Gareth Morgan of the Institute of Planning Science, co-director of the SWIM project and lead author of the paper. Instead, each orbiter instrument finds different physical properties – high concentrations of hydrogen, high wavelength, and the rate at which the temperature changes in a surface – that may suggest the presence of ice.
“Despite 20 years of data and a very good range of instruments, it’s hard to put these databases together, because they’re all so different,” Morgan said. “That’s why we assessed the consistency of ice markers, showing areas where a number of datasets indicate the presence of ice. If all five data indicate ice – bingo. ”
If there were, say, just two of them, the team would try to find out how consistent the signals were and what other materials might be creating them. Although the different datasets were not always relevant, they were often aggregated. For example, conventional radiators peer deep underground but cannot see the 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) below the surface; a neutron spectrum on board a single orbiter measured hydrogen in the top soil level but not below. High-resolution images showed that ice had recently been thrown on the surface meteorfeather effects, providing direct evidence to contribute to radar and other sensory signals of water ice.
The next steps
While Mars experts are worried about these new maps of underground ice, NASA is already wondering what the next steps might be. For one, blind spots in the currently available data can be solved by sending a new radar mission to Mars that could enter the areas of greatest interest to human mission planners: ice water in the upper layers of the subscription.
A future radar-based mission aimed at the nearby surface could also tell scientists more about the combination of materials found in rock cover, dust, and other materials found on ice surfaces. Different materials require special tools and techniques for excavating, drilling and accessing water-ice deposits, especially in a true Martian environment.
Mapping efforts in the 2020s could help carry out human missions to Mars as early as the 2030s. But before then, there will be a strong debate about where humanity has its first place on Mars: a place where astronauts will have the local ice-water resources that astronauts need. maintenance while also being able to make high-value discoveries about the evolution of rocky planets, human capacity, and the potential for life on the extraterrestrial world.
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Anndra Math
Jet Dedication Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Alana Johnson / Gray Hautaluoma
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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