Huge reserves of water discovered on Mars
A recent study published in Letters on Geophysical Research reported the presence of huge ice sheets under the equator of Mars. If the discovery is confirmed, it will be the largest area of water discovered in this region of the Red Planet.
Smithsonian scientists revisited data collected in the region by the Mars Express probe 15 years ago. Pit jellyfish. The spacecraft discovered low-density underground slabs extending for kilometers in the central region of Mars. At that time, the discovery did not have enough elements to confirm the presence of ice at the equator. Instead, experts thought they were probably slabs of dust and volcanic ash.
The researchers analyzed the latest data from the Advanced Radar for Ionospheric and Subsoil Surveys (MARSIS) contained on the Mars Express orbiter. In addition to finding that the sediments were up to 3.7 kilometers thick, they noted that the equatorial tracks matched the ice tracks on Mars’ polar caps. The research proposal is a combination of two original hypotheses: a layer of ice protected by a blanket of dry dust or ash.
If all the suspected material stored in the area of the Medusa pits melts, Mars will be covered with a layer of water up to 2.7 meters deep. The ice sheets also contain enough liquid to fill Earth’s Red Sea. The European Space Agency (ESA) calls the discovery “the largest volume of water ever discovered on the equator of Mars.”
“This is where the new radar data comes into play. Given its depth, if Medusa’s pits were just a giant pile of dust, we might expect it to collapse under its own weight. This would create something much denser than what we actually see in MARSIS. And when we simulated how different materials would behave without ice, nothing reproduced the properties: it’s ice,” explained Andrea Cicchetti, co-author of the study and member of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics.
NASA deployed its Odyssey orbiter to Mars to capture a never-before-seen panoramic image of the Martian horizon.
Water for future Mars exploration
As the space race progresses, more research is being conducted to identify useful resources on other planets and moons. The location of ice on Mars means that in the future, ships with human crews will be able to save fuel by mining.
Water in space is useful not only from the point of view of human consumption. Its components can be used to prepare dehydrated foods, produce oxygen, create cooling systems, and, together with hydrogen, for rocket fuel. In the case of the Red Planet, the location of ice deposits will determine the points where the first laboratories will be built.
Mars is an arid and probably sterile world. Thanks to orbiters and rovers, scientists have noticed that the planet harbors signs of the past, when there was a lot of water. Frozen and confirmed reserves on the planet are incompatible with the current climate. Thus, science concludes that everything goes back to a previous climate era.
Although everything points to gigantic water reserves at the equator, the report’s authors note that there is little hope for rapid exploitation. As shown by the MARSIS radar, the deposits are covered with hundreds of meters of dust. There will be no access to this resource in the coming decades. “However, every piece of ice we find helps us better understand where water once flowed on Mars and where it can be found today,” said Colin Wilson, ESA’s Mars Express project scientist.