If humans are to set foot on Mars, they must first get to where the ice is. One problem: astronaut crews don’t have the luxury of calling a hotel’s reception to receive such hospitality. Anthem Work continues to find out where and at what depth ice can be mined on the Red Planet. Not only is ice a key ingredient in sustaining humans in this distant world, it’s also useful for science, particularly the search for life. on Mars.

planetary evolution

“Ice is, of course, drinking water for human research or rocket fuel. “It can be split into oxygen and hydrogen and used as fuel to get home,” said Isaac Smith, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, Ontario. and a research fellow at the Institute of Planetary Sciences in the United States.

“Easy access to ice on Mars means billions of dollars in savings for humans. human missionsSmith told Space.com:

Smith and other scientists also care about ice because it can learn a lot about the current and past climate of Mars. Such information can be obtained from analyzing where the ice is now, how deep it is, whether it has layers and what other impurities are present. Knowing this will help us better understand planetary evolution, Smith said.

clean proof

“We already know that there is ice on Mars and it is scattered all over the planet. The polar caps can be viewed here: Soiland we see clear evidence of ice in the form of glaciers or from meteorite impacts that reveal buried ice.” outside.

By measuring the distribution, thickness, and impurities of this ice, Smith added, scientists can piece together a much better story with fewer holes in Mars’ past few hundred million-year history.

“We’re missing a lot of information about the ice that is just below the surface and is ready to be observed,” Smith said.

little ice

Human research stems in part from the need for energy, particularly solar energy. Descent to high latitudes would mean easy access to ice, but then there would be six months of darkness, Smith said. (A Martian year is approximately 687 Earth days.)

“If people want a permanent station, or even a station that can be run by robots until humans arrive, then they need sunlight every day as much as possible. So we want to know how close we can get to the equator and still have ice,” Smith said.

Ice buried more than 30 feet (9 meters) deep or covered with giant boulders may be inaccessible to technology that astronauts can drag to Mars.

“So we’re looking for shallow ice accessible by shovels or bulldozers at low latitudes,” Smith said. “Ultimately, we want to use ice that is in a safe landing zone away from steep slopes or high altitudes, so a global search is necessary.”

A cold shoulder for an ice mapper

But let’s say the mission to study Mars lies on thin ice. Mission International Mars Ice Mapper (I-MIM) was in NASA’s fiscal year 2022 budget, but was withdrawn the following year. This has discouraged researchers trying to pinpoint icy sources on Mars. I-MIM is currently in maintenance mode. But Smith said work is underway behind the scenes to take a step toward restoring it.

Canadian representatives space agency and NASA continue to discuss I-MIM with the participation of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Italian Agenzia Spaziale Italiana.

Smith said he felt some optimism that things could move forward. “All agencies want to make it work, but NASA involvement seems critical to success, so it may depend on what contributions NASA can make,” he said.

near the equator

“You really want to understand where this ice is,” said Rick Davis, assistant director of science and research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. According to him, it is also necessary to characterize this ice, which would potentially allow for water extraction. The focus is on water ice mapping in the “exploration zone”, the mid and low latitudes where human missions are applicable.

“Our error in locating the ice is huge. There is no way to guarantee that a team has pierced the ice unless we go very far north of Mars,” Davis said.

“You want to be as close as possible to the equator where there are reliable ice deposits,” he added. “That’s probably all you really need to know before trying to send people off.”

Davies said ice science could be the next frontier for studying on Mars, as ice cores give researchers a snapshot of history. The overlap of ice science—climate geology and astrobiology with resource use on Mars—is crucial, he said.

“Once humans are gone, there is growing recognition that ice drilling is a very useful use for astronauts. This drilling rig takes advantage of having a human in the loop, picking up the core in the ice and sending the cores back to Earth,” Davis said.

Warm welcome of the relic glacier

It was announced at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Scientific Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas, in March 2023. discovery of a relic glacier near the equator of Mars. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), said this finding is important because it means that water ice has been present even recently at some surface locations near the equator and may still be present at shallow depths today. Institute and Mars Institute.

Li is the lead author of the study, which focused on excavating the remnant glacier.

“There are two important things to think about,” Lee told Space.com. – While we haven’t found ice there yet, it may still be present, just buried at a shallow depth, as layers of salt can be insulating and protective. “We’re looking at a glacier’s Martian remnant region, a surface crust of (sulphate) salts that may still preserve the glacial ice underneath.”

Lee added that this scenario exists in the salt flats of the Altiplano on Earth. , high mountain plateau. He mentioned a place in the Laguna Colorada in Bolivia, where ancient ice islands are preserved under surface deposits of (carbonate) salts.

“The exceptional protective cover that salt deposits can offer is often not considered in models of how water ice might survive on Mars. Models predict that water ice will disappear from shallow depths at low latitudes in common soil types,” he said. But with surface materials that have exceptional insulating properties, such as salt crusts. If you’re struggling, water ice can, in principle, survive on geological time scales, even at the Martian equator.”

pure ice

Another point is that if there is still water ice in the Martian remnant glacier zone, it could be relatively pure ice compared to the land ice found anywhere on Mars, including at high latitudes where ice is often closely mixed within the regolith, Lee said. .

“Glaciers are made up of falling snow, so the water ice in a glacier is relatively pure in nature,” Lee said. “Over time, impurities mix and the salts covering the glacier can also seep in, but overall you’re dealing with large water ice that requires very little handling during extraction, especially since the glacier is relatively young.”

However, at higher latitudes on Mars, near-surface ice will often be more difficult to extract and process into clean, pure water.