Wells drilled into Martian ice WOULD provide enough water for mankind to survive on the Red Planet, NASA study finds
- Water is needed for drinking, growing food and even making rocket fuel
- Mars has no flowing surface liquid – but does have huge sheets of ice
- Experts say rod well on Mars could produce about 380 litres of water per day
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One of the biggest hurdles the first human visitors to Mars will face is a lack of water.
Needed for drinking, growing food and even making rocket fuel for their return journey, a lack of accessible liquid water is a major issue.
However, Mars does have huge sheets of ice, and a new NASA study says they could be used to create wells producing enough water to sustain human life.
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A NASA study has simulated how wells used on Earth could be used to drill into them and melt ice.
HOW DID MARS GET ITS UNDERGROUND GLACIERS?
Researchers say the ice was likely deposited as snow long ago.
The deposits are exposed in cross section as relatively pure water ice, capped by a layer one to two yards (or meters) thick of ice-cemented rock and dust.
The ice contains bands and color variations that suggest it was formed layer by layer, perhaps as snow accumulated over time, leading to ice sheets.
Researchers believe the ice formed relatively recently, because the sites appear smooth on the surface, unpocked by craters that would be formed by celestial debris smashing into the planet over time.
Last year buried glaciers have been spotted on Mars, in a ‘game changing’ development that could provide unlimited water for the first human visitors to the red planet.
Erosion has exposed eight ice sites, some as shallow as a few feet (one meter) below the surface, and going as deep as 100 meters or more, researchers said.
These underground cliffs appear ‘to be nearly pure ice,’ say the researchers, who analysed data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005.
Now, a NASA study has simulated how wells used on Earth could be used to drill into them and melt ice.
‘The surface of Mars once had abundant water flowing on its surface, but there has been a general perception that this surface is now completely dry,’ the researchers, led by Stephen Hoffman at the Aerospace Corporation in Texas, wrote.
‘Recently, several lines of research have shown that there are sources of potentially large quantities of water at many locations on the surface, including regions considered candidates for future human missions.
If these reservoirs of water can be accessed in support of human Mars missions, a dramatic change in the approach to these missions could result.’
The team looked at using a type of reservoir called a Rodriguez well, or Rod well, developed in the early 1960s by the US Army for camps in Greenland.
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HOW TO DRILL FOR WATER ON THE RED PLANET
The team looked at using a type of reservoir called a Rodriguez well, or Rod well, developed in the early 1960s by the US Army for camps in Greenland.
They have been used ever since in remote areas including the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.
A Rod well works by drilling through the ground into the ice, melting some of the ice to create a pool, and then pumping water back up from that pool.
By continuing to pump heat into the pool, a reservoir and a continuous water supply is created.
A Rod well works by drilling through the ground into the ice, melting some of the ice to create a pool, and then pumping water back up from that pool.
They have been used ever since in remote areas including the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.
‘A review of available techniques for accessing and withdrawing water from these buried ice deposits led to a technique that appears to be feasible in the Martian environment: drilling through the overlying debris layer and creating an underground reservoir by heating the ice layer in place,’ the team wrote.
A Rod well works by drilling through the ground into the ice, melting some of the ice to create a pool, and then pumping water back up from that pool.
By continuing to pump heat into the pool, a reservoir and a continuous water supply is created.
A Rod well on Mars could produce about 380 litres of water per day.
This is close to the average daily water use per person in the US, but about 10 times what each astronaut on the International Space Station uses daily
The researchers say they could adapt a Mars rover to include the drilling capabilities, allowing it to drill and ferry water to settlements
Although ice has long been known to exist on Mars, a better understanding of its depth and location could be vital to future human explorers, said a recent report in the US journal Science.
‘Humans need water wherever they go, and it’s very heavy to carry with you,’ said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, a co-author on today’s report.
‘Previous ideas for extracting human-usable water from Mars were to pull it from the very dry atmosphere or to break down water-containing rocks,’
A cross-section of underground ice is exposed at the steep slope that appears bright blue in this enhanced-color view from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scene is about 550 yards wide. The scarp drops about 140 yards from the level ground in the upper third of the image.
‘Here we have what we think is almost pure water ice buried just below the surface.
‘You don’t see a high-tech solution,’ Byrne added.
‘You can go out with a bucket and shovel and just collect as much water as you need. I think it’s sort of a game-changer.
‘It’s also much closer to places humans would probably land as opposed to the polar caps, which are very inhospitable.’
At this pit on Mars, the steep slope at the northern edge (toward the top of the image) exposes a cross-section of a thick sheet of underground water ice. The image is from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with an enhanced-color central swath between grayscale on each side.
The sites are in both northern and southern hemispheres of Mars, at latitudes from about 55 to 58 degrees, equivalent on Earth to Scotland or the tip of South America.
Researchers believe the ice formed relatively recently, because the sites appear smooth on the surface, unpocked by craters that would be formed by celestial debris smashing into the planet over time.
The cliffs are all near the poles, which slip into a frigid darkness during the Martian winter and would not be a suitable site for a long-term human camp.
However, if a sample could be drilled from one of the glaciers, researchers could learn plenty about Mars’ climate history and the potential for life on Earth’s neighboring planet.
The scarps directly expose bright glimpses into vast underground ice previously detected with spectrometers on NASA’s Mars Odyssey (MRO) orbiter, with ground-penetrating radar instruments on MRO and on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, and with observations of fresh impact craters that uncover subsurface ice.
‘It’s like having one of those ant farms where you can see through the glass on the side to learn about what’s usually hidden beneath the ground,’ said Byrne.
Scientists have not determined how these particular scarps initially form.
However, once the buried ice becomes exposed to Mars’ atmosphere, a scarp likely grows wider and taller as it ‘retreats,’ due to sublimation of the ice directly from solid form into water vapor.
At some of them, the exposed deposit of water ice is more than 100 yards, or meter, thick.
Images taken over the course of three Martian years reveal massive chunks of rock that fell from the ice as erosion occurred, leading the researchers to estimate that the ice is retreating a few millimeters each summer.
‘This kind of ice is more widespread than previously thought,’ said Colin Dundas, a geologist at the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.
‘There is shallow ground ice under roughly a third of the Martian surface, which records the recent history of Mars.’
‘What we’ve seen here are cross-sections through the ice that give us a 3-D view with more detail than ever before.’
Examination of some of the scarps with MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) confirmed that the bright material is frozen water.
A check of the surface temperature using Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera helped researchers determine they’re not seeing just thin frost covering the ground.
Researchers previously used MRO’s Shallow Radar (SHARAD) to map extensive underground water-ice sheets in middle latitudes of Mars and estimate that the top of the ice is less than about 10 yards beneath the ground surface.
‘If you had a mission at one of these sites, sampling the layers going down the scarp, you could get a detailed climate history of Mars,’ suggested MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
‘It’s part of the whole story of what happens to water on Mars over time: Where does it go? When does ice accumulate? When does it recede?’
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