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NASA Probes Reveal Vast Stores of Martian Ice
John Faughnan writes: "The BBC reports that a British newspaper has leaked stunning news from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Vast amounts of water ice are present on mars, "[if it] were to melt it could cover the planet in an ocean at least 500 metres deep." Researchers thought it would take a year to detect any water ice below the martian surface, but the huge quantity meant that weeks of observation were sufficient. The BBC notes that "The Mars Polar Lander was to touch down in exactly the right spot in 1999 and would have undoubtedly detected the ice had it not malfunctioned on the way down." This discovery will change plans for upcoming probes and may lead to a manned mission within the next two decades. The official announcement was scheduled for this Thursday prior to several publications."
Not just terraforming, but this makes a manned mission truly feasible. With huge stores of water available, we won't need to waste energy on moving as much. This means a manned Mars mission could be much cheaper.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I don't quite understand how the discovery of ice on mars would make manned missions any more possible. Don't they take water with them on missions anyway?
If its already there, it means that you don't have to bring it with you (or at least not as much).
Water can be used in the production of oxygen, and also fuel (after you break down into Hydrogen and Oxygen). These things require a LOT of water... much more than we could possibly hope to bring with us.
Discovery of water also means that the chances of finding life (or at least sign of primative life that once existed there) are much, much greater.
Having ice on mars solves two major problems with shipping human beings to mars, and even creating a settlement there.
First, now we only need to ship enough water to keep them alive for the trip there, thus saving an incredible amount of energy.
Second, which is not so obvious. We only need to send enough oxygen for the trip there. Why? Well, ice is water, water is H2O
2 parts Hydrogen, 1 part Oxygen.
You can chemically seperate the oxygen from the hydrogen using electricity, which is easily generated by either solar collectors and/or a nuclear powerplant. Thus, they can not only drink, but breathe when they get to Mars.
This is an absolutely amazing finding (if it is true), since now it will become considerably cheaper to send people to Mars. Also, it might even become more feasible to leave them there with a colony then to send them back.
~ kjrose
The care needs to be taken in the other direction. Water means that Earth life can live there--for instance, bacteria of the Antarctic sort. If we want to know about Martian indigenous life, we need to not inadvertently release several hundred species of microbes on the planet, some of which might take hold and crowd out any existing forms.
Even if they didn't adapt and live, sorting out their chemical components from those of native forms would complicate research.
Sterilizing an entire spacecraft is no easy job in the first place, and it gets much more difficult when the contents include live human beings.
Has anyone actually looked at a Mars map? I'm running the latest version of the Mars Simulation Project, looking at the planet in topography mode.
This planet has altitudes ranging from approximately -8000 meters to +22000 meters, with two very distinctive zones: around -100 W, mostly on the southern hemisphere, there is a huge, +5000 meters continent; the northern hemisphere is between -5000 and 0 meters; and there is a very impressive hole centered at 70 E and 40 S, between -7000 and -5000 meters, sourrounded by a 0 to 5000 meters zone - what happened there? A huge spacial hit?
Anyway, saying Mars would be covered by 500 meters of water is completely meaningless. I guess they took the quantity of water and divided it by the surface of Mars. They mostly want to impress people, I guess, but I for one would be more impressed if someone came with a new Mars map showing the areas where the "sea" would be once the ice was melted. There is an illustration there, but of course it doesn't take into account the "real" quantity of ice/water.
This is great news if there is water on Mars but i believe one of the major stumbling blocks on a manned mission to Mars and sustaining him isn't so much water
but getting people there alive.
Astronauts just on the journey (180 days each way + 550 days for return journey planetary alignment) would be exposed to lethal doses of radiation meaning when they got to Mars they would already be too ill and poisoned to be of any use to science let alone come home, i don't really feel that comfortable in sending (volunteers) to die a horrible slow death from radiation sickness under the guise of "research"
NASA have did do some research in 1998 on using dirt for shielding on any base but this doesnt answer the journey time radiation exposure problem
I think we forget in our own insignificance that the ISS and the shuttle fly close enough to the Earth's magnetic field and our atmostphere to be protected from the worst effects of our Sun (radiation,flares,magnetic bursts,uv, etc) but once we leave for Mars we will be exposed to the Suns full destructivness and we still havent developed protective materials/shields (short of 6ft thick lead) that will protect us long enough not to kill us in the 915 day exposure of such a mission.
I am still suprised that we think we can send people there after water when so far all we have sent is a glorified "remote control car" instead of an advanced humanoid type robots like this into space
As explained here, earth bacteria survived on the moon for 2 years.
IIRC, they sterilize some space probes by blasting them with radiation before launch.
One other thing that should be noted is that if the water is ever leaked to the surface, along with an increase in heat via CO2 being pumped into the atmosphee, then there will probably be a reduction in the amount of dust in the atmosphere, as the iron binds to water droplets. This would modify the atmospheric conditions and probably reduce the number of violent storms. Also, a humid atmosphere would probably also make it more favourable to life, if there isn't any already there.
Without water it would be much more difficult to teraform the planet.
This is unresearched, but I believe that it is a probable scenario, based on the knowledge I have.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Arranging the tanks and compartments that carry such stuff to provide a solar storm safety shelter in the center of your "tin can" is a trivial design exercise. A meter or two of water between you and the radiation is pretty much all you need. The ambient radiation is a problem, although only in percentage terms (it slightly increases your chance of getting cancer sometime later in your life). The point has been made that you could recruit the crew from smokers; they couldn't smoke on the mission; and you would actually decrease their chance of getting cancer during their lives by sending them to Mars!
Many, many design studies have been done utilising exactly the design I mentioned above, and it works. Read about it in this book or at this website.
I agree. We should demonstrate that we can really melt the Antartic ice cap, before we arrogantly assume we can do the same thing on Mars where it's even colder.
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