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Space Science

Lots of Ice On Mars 162

Posted by michael from the popsicles-for-everyone dept.
Total Recall writes: "The Mars Odyssey spacecraft is finding large amounts of hydrogen in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This strongly indicates the presence of water ice (since H2O is both common and very stable). The data samples about the upper meter or so of the Martian surface. This apparently extends from the south polar cap up to about 60 south latitude. It suggests a permafrost of mixed ice and dirt."
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Lots of Ice On Mars More

Lots of Ice On Mars

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  • If life DOES exist on mars, and it metabolizes Fe (thus all the rust everywhere)... It would make for a great Sci-Fi story at least.

    • Re:Wouldn't it be cool... (Score:2, Informative)

      by vena ( 318873 )
      (un?)fortunately, james lovelock discovered in the late 1960's that atmospheric volitility is where to look for signs of life, and mars' reached equilibrium long ago. we may indeed find signs of previous life forms, but it more than likely died off millions upon millions of years ago.

      if you're interested, dr. lovelock was working on this very thing, finding life on mars for NASA when he formulated this hypothesis. the details of which can be found in a very good book called The Ages of Gaia.

      (and no, what you saw in the Final Fantasy movie is not really Gaia theory.)

      enjoy :)
  • If there's a lot of water, it's 1000 times easier to colonize.
    • Yes, and with the Fe all over, set up roving factories to scoop up, filter, and create iron ingots. This should cause some greenhouse emissions, I believe, and a number of other gasses, I believe including steam, would help in the creation of an atmosphere.

      What would really be interesting, though, would be how the Martian cities are in Cowboy Bebop. Though, I don't think that such a plan is really workable. It would be simpler and less expensive (in terms of more than just money) to terraform the entire planet.

      Before Mars is terraformed, however, someone should be sent out to check the Pyramid, ruins, and other features of that area.
      • Brings to me the book series Red, Blue and Green Mars. They guy that wrote those books was (apparently) involved with the NASA and he developed some real physics on how to terraform Mars.

        Interesting reading to anyone that likes sci-fi, specially hard sci-fi (the books not difficult or anything, it's just realistic).

        Water was very important. You can see it also in the Total Recall film, melting the water was the key (though here it's a riddiculous "Melt & Play")...
        • Actually, I've yet to read the RGB (I think they're in that order, but even if they aren't, easier to remember :) Mars books, but can't wait to. I'll have to add them to my wishlist (no more clothing, mother!) and hope somebody gets them for my b-day.

          As for Total Recall, yet another insipid action flick thrown to the masses. Prolefeed.
        • I'm reading Red Mars right now. The book mentions alot about the permafrost. Was that a lucky guess, or is this old news? Just curios, its amazing how often I see news about Mars now that I am reading the book
          • Lucky i guess i would say.

            But it's just saying they though there was H2O on mars. Because at the poles temperatures (which is a very basic knowledge), ice is always frozen, thus the name. An in the ecuator, i'd boil when sun-faced and leave mars or reach the poles.
      • im not really certain that the gravity of mars actually would support a significant atmosphere. below a certain level, any gas released in to the atmosphere would bleed off in to space. i cant seem to find anyone who knows anything about how to calculate this.
      • Please see this great NASA site [nasa.gov] with pictures showing that it's not a face.

        Of course, I fully expect a reply that this is all just a government sponsored cover-up/conspiracy.


  • The availability of ICE may be nice, but what is really needed is H3.

    With current technology, it will take at least 2 years of space flight to go from Earth to Mars, and 2 more years for the flight back. The thing is, if you have to carry all the fuel for the to-and-flo flights, the spacecraft will be too heavy to be of any other use.

    If there's H3 on Mars, however, the spacecraft only has to carry enough fuel to go TO Mars, and then get refuel there to come home.

    One more thought - if there's plenty of ice leftover, then Mars could be used as a "refueling station" for space flight further away than Mars.

    Just a thought.
    • great, now we're planning on depleting the resources of yet another planet

    • Re:Mars as a refueling station ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Soft ( 266615 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @04:51AM (#3097016)
      If there's H3 on Mars, however, the spacecraft only has to carry enough fuel to go TO Mars, and then get refuel there to come home.

      It is unlikely that you can find tritium (H3) anywhere, it decays in a few years or decades. Perhaps you mean helium-3, and suppose that we have a He3-powered fusion-drive spaceship?

      Anyway, we already have chemical rockets, for which water can be quite interesting (hydrogen-oxygen).

      One more thought - if there's plenty of ice leftover, then Mars could be used as a "refueling station" for space flight further away than Mars.

      Perhaps. But Mars isn't that small a planet, so mining near-Earth asteroids would probably be cheaper.

    • Oxygen is a actually a rather good propellant too, _if_ you use nuclear propulsion, which is the only sensible propulsion system for human spaceflight anyway.
      The NERVA rocket prototyped in the 1960s would have had enough power to propel a spaceship to mars in a matter of _weeks_, not years.
      And the propellent is disjunct from the energy-source in this design, so you can use whatever you happen to find.

      So, cudos for NASA to resume research in this directions, and
      */flame
      Eat flaming death, No-Nukes_In_Space-Activists!
      */flame

      • No it didn't (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Goonie ( 8651 )
        The nuclear thermal rocket is considerably better than any chemical rocket, but it's not nearly good enough to allow you to take a non-ballistic trajectory to Mars. What it *does* do is let you carry a lot less propellant, so you can carry more other stuff (like people, supplies, and equipment).

        To do the weeks instead of months thing, you need something more exotic again, like an Orion (push the craft along by exploding nuclear weapons behind it), a fusion drive, or maybe a laser-powered light sail (though presumably you need a laser on Mars to slow it down again . . . ).

    • NASA has already gotten this point. The MIP program (Mars In-situ Propellant) is aimed at exploring and developing the technology to produce fuel on Mars for the return journey.

      Zubrin of the Mars Society has been a long proponent of the idea, amongst others.

      Derek
      • NASA has already gotten this point. The MIP program (Mars In-situ Propellant) is aimed at exploring and developing the technology to produce fuel on Mars for the return journey.

        True, but this is aimed at making CO and O2 from the atmosphere (or CH4 and O2 if you bring some hydrogen from Earth), which is not nearly as efficient as H2 and O2. Which doesn't make it altogether uninteresting...

  • Now we know where to land (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Soft ( 266615 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @04:43AM (#3096992)
    Water is what a colony will need most. If one can get it on-site, it can make huge mass savings on what one must bring in from Earth. That, and the atmosphere (meteor protection, possibility to aerobrake when arriving) might make it easier to have a colony on Mars than on the Moon, even though it's much farther.
    • Actually, once you are in orbit, you are about half-way to anywhere in the solar system. If I remember correctly, the minimum energy orbit to get to Mars is actually less than that to get to the Moon. It's a long flight though, 18 months, I think. That's also only if the Earth and Mars are in the right orientation, which I think happens only about once every three years, so you need to stay on the surface for another year and a half before heading back.

      There are already designs for missions that involve manufacturing the fuel for the return mission using materials on Mars. It's reasonably easy to manufacture Methane on the surface. You just need Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, so if water is there and you can get to it easily, making methane to power a return trip should be easy. Just use the water for Hydrogen and Oxygen and the atmosphere for the Carbon. (Actually you could probably get oxygen from the soil, too, since it's got a lot of oxidized iron, also known as rust, in it.)

      The biggest concern that I would have for a Mars mission is the toll it would take on the astronauts. It's a long trip with relatively high radiation. (You can only carry so much shielding.) Unless the crew module is spun to provide some artificial gravity, it's likely that the astronauts would be in pretty bad shape before they even got to Mars. Though there have been some very long stays in space stations, those guys weren't exactly fit for a night of clubbing when they got home.

      All that said, I'd go in second! I, uh, just got to get permission from my girl friend first ...

      • Somebody been reading Zubrin? :-)

        Actually, it'd probably be a lot easier to grab the oxygen from carbon dioxide (i.e. the atmosphere) while you're extracting the carbon, rather than trying to wrench oxygen out of surface oxides.

        Anyway, on to my main point: the idea of pulling H2 out of Martian permafrost was pretty much discarded as too difficult for early automated missions - the idea was that you would send a relatively small amount of H2 from earth, and then generate CH4+02 from the atmospheric C02 and the H2 brought along for the trip. Much easier than trying to dig up ice and get H2 out of it. Now, for later manned trips maybe the ice would be useful for getting H2. But in that case I would think that you'd just go to an LH2/LOX rocket rather than a methane one. Methane rockets are a good choice for automated in-situ propellant since the CH4 is storable in the long term, and the raw materials are easily accessible from the atmosphere alone (no digging required). With people on the ground, you might as well just dig up a huge load of ice, electrolyze it to H2 and O2 and go. No need to worry about complicated automated diggers since humans will be in the loop.

    • Even MORE interesting is THIS [arizona.edu] image from the press kit that shows not only lots of water at the south pole but a significant concentration around the north pole and best of all - three or four EQUATORIAL (read warm) spots that seem fairly wet. Oaises, anyone? We just found our landing sites...
  • I'm looking forward to the day we can actually dig to some depth and see if some liquid water remains. DNA from a primitive lifeform might provide more info on how life emerged in the primordial soup. I know mars was geologicaly active (whats the name of that big 15km volcanoe...), so there's a chance that some heat is left inside. Was there a study done on this?
  • The water on Mars COULD be different than the water on earth. It might be H2O, but what's floating around in it? Just because there is water on Mars doesn't mean there is life. There could be, but maybe not. Might not be a good idea to drink the water until we find out for sure.

    • Re:Somewhat Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Skyshadow ( 508 )
      Might not be a good idea to drink the water until we find out for sure.

      Well, liquid water is probably way below the surface if it exists at all. Everything else is probably ice.

      Besides that, though, I wouldn't worry too much -- bacteria has to evolve to both take particular advantage of a host and to overcome that host's immune system. Even if you subscribe to the idea that terrestrial life may have traveled to Earth from Mars, chances are that even a Martian "cold" wouldn't be adaptible to modern humanity. There's just to big of an evolutionary gap.

      But yeah, I'll admit that I think I'd still take a look under a microscope first if my drinking water hadn't been purified or manufactured.

  • Terriforming Mars (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JPriest ( 547211 )
    There are actually a few ideas in progress to melt the ice and Terriform [howstuffworks.com] Mars so that the climate is sufficient to support human life.
    • From an earlier /. article [slashdot.org], this [nasa.gov] is the NASA plan for terraforming. Though I still think that some of the more interesting parts of Mars (the Pyramid, anyone?) should be investigated thoroughly before any plans begin.

      And I still like my roving iron plant idea from an earlier post regarding this article. Cheap iron, and more greenhouse gasses to create an atmosphere with. The only concern would be fuel, but I'll bet a Coke that if it goes to the boards, the design team will figure that issue out.
      • Ok, I give up. I don't understand it any more. I've followed the link, read the NASA article, and I still have this question:

        I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's? Then, how are you going to maintain that pressure? The fact that Mars' gravity is about 1/3 of earth's is the big spoiler here, right? Assuming you can get all these greenhouse gases and heat up the atmosphere, wouldn't the atmosphere just boil away into outer space? I mean, given earth-like temperatures and pressures, a substantial fraction of the gas molecules would just reach escape velocity and be lost forever? What am I missing here???
        • Actually, I think you're catching something the rest of us haven't. That this might be a pipe dream after all. But then again, it never hurts to imagine.
        • I don't think this will actually be a problem, though I am not certain. But consider:

          A physics friend tells me that the average velocity of a hydrogen molecule at STP is on the order of 1000 mph, or about 0.5 km/s. Assuming an oxygen molecule would have the same KE (since the temp is the same), the velocity of O2 would be around 0.12 km/s. Given that the escape velocity of Mars is 5 km/s, it should be able to hold an oxygen molecule easily.

          Of course that's average, and the distribution may be totally whacked. But still there is more than an order of magnitude to work with there.

          • As you correctly point out, the average velocity is not the complete story. The distribution of velocities will probably obey the Maxwell-Boltzmann laws of statistical mechanics (too long ago since I took it in college, but it is understood rather well).
            The problem is that the molecules with the highest velocity may escape. If the temperature is in balance, a new equilibrium will establish itself, and again, the molecules with the highest velocities will escape. As someone else pointed out, there will need to be a replenishment mechanism. I'm not saying it can't be done, but consider that it's hard enough to establish a breathable atmosphere in the first place. A self-replenishing one is probably even trickier.

            Then again, what do I know?

        • Gravity is not the only factor in determining atmospheric pressure. Look at Titan: the surface gravity is 0.13 that of earth, but the atmosphere is 60% more dense. Just as important is the temperature, composition and replensihment rate.

          • Interesting. I'm not familiar wityh Titan's atmosphere. How does it replenish? Is there some kind of volcanic process that emits gases?

            And what is the temperature on Titan? The temperature obviously play a big role. Unfortunately, the atmosphere on Mars will have to be heated up from -85 F to +60 F. That should make it harder to keep the atmosphere from boiling off. Consider that Mars has an atmospheric pressure of about 0.01 bar right now.
        • I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's?

          We don't really need full atmospheric pressure. The problems can largely be solved by increasing the precentage of oxygen. Humans can pretty easily survive at a half or third of atmospheric pressure, provided that we have sufficient oxygen partial pressure to breathe. Think of what happens when an airplane loses cabin pressure at 30,000 feet - the oxygen masks come down so you can breathe, but peoples eyeballs don't fly out of their head or anyhing like that.
          • Um, yes, but consider what mountaineers climbing Mt. Everest do for 8 hours a day: melting snow, so they have enough drinking water. You see, the low atmospheric pressure makes you lose water like crazy (through your breathing). Getting enough oxygen is only part of the story.

            Also, I think the oxygen partial pressure is related to the overall pressure, i.e., the lower the outside pressure, the harder it will be to get sufficient oxygen partial pressure, right?

            Besides, getting a 20% O2 atmosphere sounds challenging enough to me, seems things won't get easier if you need a 40% or 60% O2 atmosphere.
            • All quite true. However, if you can get it to the point where you can be outside part of the day without a space suit, even if you do have fairly hefty water consumption, it still beats a bulky space suit whenever you need to go out.
  • Remember in that movie, apparently you can melt the ice to produce oxygen or something?

    If I remember correctly back from high school, electrolysis breaks it into oxygen and hydrogen.

    I wonder if that's gonna be useful at all?
  • I watched a special on the Discovery channel abut meteors, it had some insightful information on meteors and some near-misses in the past, if you get a topographical map of the earth and remove all the trees, water, and man made stuff, what's left makes the moon look like glass. The Earth has been hit my multiple meteors and even since the presence of the human race we have had some near devastating close calls, we don't currently have enough centers/people to monitor the entire sky for meteors, but it is a likely case that a one could cause the destruction of the human race unless we populate another planet as well to ensure the survival of the species.
    • ...but it is a likely case that a one could cause the destruction of the human race unless we populate another planet as well to ensure the survival of the species.

      This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.

      I wouldn't so much list a second haven from extinction as a driving factor in pushing to colonize Mars. Instead, I think that our very basic instinct to push outwards is what will drive us there -- whenever people think they can expand into an area, they go for it. We find the resources we need, we adapt to the environment, and (when necessary) we beat down the locals (even when the locals are us).

      • The dinosaurs didn't have Hollywood?
        Not to state their reason for extinction as fact but it is generally accepted never the less.
      • This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.

        Well, that's a relief! Unfortunately, it's complete and utter nonsense. A hit by a somewhat sizeable asteroid or comet would not only wipe out the human race, but probably most lifeforms on earth. Oh, and it's not size that matters, it's kinetic energy, which is 0.5*m*v^2. Dependent on mass (~size), but more on velocity, since that gets squared.

        Hypothetical but realistic example: take a (spherical) piece of rock with a radius of 10 km, hitting the earth at 50 km/s. Assuming a density of 4000 kg/m^3, that gives us a mass of 1.68*10^16 kg. The kinetic energy is roughly
        2.1*10^25 Joules. That's the equivalent of 4.67 billion megatons of TNT. Or 467,000,000,000 Hiroshima bombs all set off at the same moment.

        Can someone do a sanity check on this? It seems shockingly high.

        Assumptions:
        1 Megaton TNT ~ 4.5*10^15 J
        Hiroshima bomb ~ 10 kilotons of TNT

        Fact: volume of a sphere is (4/3)*pi*r^3.
        • The 4.67 billion megatons figure is correct for your assumptions.

          The good news is that there is only about a one in three billion chance of a rock that size hitting the earth this year. These are long odds - but the chance is not zero.

        • http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/World /Hiroshima.html

          Little Boy (Hiroshima) was 12.5 kilotons.
          Fat Man (Nagasaki) was 22 kilotons.

          You're close enough, I just thought some people might be interested in the actually statistics. Aren't the atomic bombs we have now into the megatons?

          • Actually, I believe the US has decomissioned our largest bombs (greater than 5 megatons), simply because there aren't any targets large enough to warrant using them. Even if there were, we could just send a half dozen cheaper 1 megaton bombs and get better damage dispersal anyway.
      • Sorry - you are wrong about that - it is not a Hollywood exaggeration. There are plenty of rocks in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter which are large enough to cause a Permian level extinction on the Earth. These rocks are from time to time deflected by the massive gravitational field of Jupiter in such a way as to become potentially hazardous to Earth .

        The object Toutatis [nasa.gov]. Is an example of a large asteroid which has been deflected in this way. Fortunately the orbit of Toutatis won't allow it to hit us any time soon - but it is plenty big enough - about 2.8 Km across - to kill billions of people if it did. On average the Earth is struck by a rock that big about every 8 million years - not a Dinosaur killer - but enough to effectively destroy civilization.


  • Ooops -- they thought the red one was called Europa.

  • I think the Martians [amazon.com] will be VERY angry [patriot.net].

    (For those that don't get the Niven reference, water is deadly to the Martians in the Known Space series, and one of the characters in Protector used this to good advantage).

  • Who would have thought? Well, half right, at least. Or, should I say, half-assed right?

    "Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same
    distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures
    where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that
    means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
    -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89

  • Explanation of Asteroid Belt (Score:3, Informative)

    by tepes ( 234179 ) <jmmckenzie&operamail,com> on Saturday March 02, 2002 @05:54AM (#3097157) Homepage
    One neat thing about the info released today is that it supports what Richard Hoagland has been saying for months. See pictures here [artbell.com] and here. [artbell.com]

    At his website [enterprisemission.com] you can find out how this validates the theory that Mars was once the satellite of the planet that formed the asteroid belt when it broke up for unknown reasons. (The pattern of water is indicative of tidal action.)
    • I've always heard that if you put all those asteroids together in the asteroid belt, you still wouldn't have enought mass to make much of a planet (think very small Jovian moon sized). Is this no longer a common theory?
      • I've always heard that if you put all those asteroids together in the asteroid belt, you still wouldn't have enought mass to make much of a planet (think very small Jovian moon sized). Is this no longer a common theory?

        The common theory is that the asteroid belt is a remnant of the creation of the planets-a planet that never formed. A few people are very much out on a limb in suggesting that the belt was a planet. Those ideas appear to owe more to Space Opera than to space science. If a planet did explode, of course most of the material could conveniently be postulated to have left the solar system, never to return. The proponents, mainly the eccentric astronomer Tom van Flandern, could just be right, but there isn't any particular reason to suppose so as yet.

        • Well, the death star was long ago in a galaxy far, far away...

          Various pieces could have been flung on a trajectory taking it into the sun, or even into the Yucatan peninsula - killing off all the dinosaurs... but that's just another deranged theory.

    • A piece of advice, Richard Hoagland may or may not be right. But using Art Bell to give him scientific credibility is NOT a good move!
      • Hah! I thought about that, actually, but the marked-up pictures there are from Hoagland himself. I just happened to catch Hoagland's interview on Coast to Coast and saw the story appear on Slashdot almost simultaneously.

        Interestingly, though I haven't a link for it, Sir Arthur C. Clarke maintains that the south polar region of Mars is full of Banyan-like trees, while Hoagland seems to believe, from the interview, that the massively cratered Southern Hemisphere became that way as early as 65M years ago, making the explosion of the Mystery Planet(TM) the cause for dinosaur extinction.
      • I like this logic.

        Isn't this the kind of thinking that brings down science by keeping us confined to whatever is widely believed by the establishment? You're saying that people will be judging him because he appeared on a radio show and not based solely on the scientific value of his work. Isn't that a totally unscientific approach?
        This kind of approach, it seems, would only serve to label anyone who challenges commonly accepted notions of science as "looney" or "nutty".

        And if no one had mentioned the Art Bell show and the theory of Mars being an ex-satellite, I would've myself. I'm surprised no earlier mention of it was made, as that is what makes the story much more interesting in terms of potential importance of this find.
    • you can find out how this validates the theory that Mars was once the satellite of the planet that formed the asteroid belt when it broke up for unknown reasons.

      The big problems with such a theory are that the asteroids are not made of material which has undergone differentiation. When a large planet forms, the heat generted by brining all of the material together melts it. It then undergoes a process of differentiation with heavier metals, like iron, forming a core and lighter materials, like those in the Earth's crust, rising to the surface. From spectroscopic analysis, it seems that the asteroids are completely undifferentiated.

      So, a seemingly attractive theory such as the demise of a planet (and what would generate enough energy to blow it up?) fails to have much of a basis when you bring some real science to bear.
  • A few years ago after NASA first concluded there may be water on Mars (from the patterns in the hillsides), I put this up, with toungue half in cheek: http://www.marshydro.com. I wonder how much people would pay to drink the stuff? If people will pay $100,000 (on eBay) for a Segway, what will they pay for bottled Mars water bought back from missions?
    • Not likely, if you look at the deal with moon rocks which is another example of NASA missing out on lost commercial opportunity.


      From this Google result: [lunar-meteorite.com] A sample of lunar dust, weighing only a few milligrams, sold at a Superior Galleries auction in California in 1993 for $42,500
      (Final Frontier, May/June 1993, p6). A short while later, a sale of Russian lunar samples took place in New York at a Southeby's auction. An estimated one carat rock fragment sold for a record $442,000 (Final Frontier, March/April, 1994, pp.
      58-61)

      Couple this with policy gathered from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG): "Moon rocks gathered by the Apollo missions are considered national treasures and cannot be privately owned or sold." (OIG's New Reports Dec 1999.)


      Sure, MarsHydro is a good idea. But look at NASA's failure to capitalise on the moon-rock market. Not gonna happen with this NASA. Oh well.

      yet another argument for the privitasation of NASA. Oh well.

  • Damn I am glad about this discovery. Actually I am almost feeling good enough to get off Prozac.

    That means that our couragous space explorers are able to drink a decent whiskey on the rocks after travelling to mars for years, fleeing the problems of Planet Earth. After a ride like this, they will need one, that is for sure.

    Gotta love science.

  • Ok let's stop looking for water for a bit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LazyDawg ( 519783 ) <`lazydawg' `at' `hotmail.com'> on Saturday March 02, 2002 @07:14AM (#3097244) Homepage
    When you are growing plants, you need to have nitrogen all around in the soil and air or not much will get produced. Where are we going to be getting this vital chemical for life on other planets? Importing huge tanks of nitrogen from Earth limits the size of our hermetic domes, and greatly increases maintenance costs.

    Is there enough nitrogen in the Martian atmosphere or soil, or will we have to import it?
    • exactly, mars is nearly devoid of nitrogen (2.7%, earth's atmosphere is 79% nitrogen). the entire planet reached chemical equilibrium some time ago. this is yet another publicity stunt to get money for sending shit to mars. NASA has been doing it since the 60's and the viking missions. back then it was *just* life on mars, now we're easily wowed by the thought of water.

      not that learning more isn't fun and all, but cries of "water means life!" are unfounded and dumb.
      • 2.7% of Mars's atmosphere is still plenty of nitrogen. Maybe you won't get bacteria that can fix it right away, but you can easily convert that using technological means.
      • You are confusing issues here. Yes to get abundant life (crops, forests, plankton, etc) you need lots of nitrogen. But to get some form of life wouldn't need that much.

        I agree, water DOESN'T, necessarily, mean life. But the converse seems to hold true ("Life means water.") Finding evidence of life somewhere else in the universe is pretty darn important. Why not look where there is water?

  • President Eisenhower and the Martians (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did you know the the US Government and President Eisenhower believed [freerepublic.com]. that the Martian moon Phobos was actually a hollow artificial moon created by an alien species, yet they hid this news from the American people. What else are they hiding?
  • What's really interesting is to compare the neutron maps with photo maps of the Martian ice cap on the south pole here [msss.com]. You've got to be careful about the scale and orientation of these two images, since they are totally different (90 degrees is at three-o-clock on the neutron map, nine-o-clock on the photo map) but what's really facinating is that the visible ice pack is not circular-symmetrical around the pole and the neutron data IS.
    • Even MORE interesting is THIS [arizona.edu] image from the press kit that shows not only lots of water at the south pole but a significant concentration around the north pole and best of all - three or four EQUATORIAL (read warm) spots that seem fairly wet. Oaises, anyone? We just found our landing sites...
      • I wonder if it was summer in the North when this was taken? If it was, I'd like to see more data half a Marian year from now, to see just how permanent this permafrost is. If you look at the picture, there is a concentration of hydrogen in the North, but it is not nearly as large as in the South. This raises some very interesting possibilities. What this means is that there is condensation on mars (of one form or another), and thus it may be possible to make (inefficient compared to on Earth) stills on Mars! Visions of Dune are flying through my head right now. I wonder if there are sandworms there (bow before Shai Hulud)? ;)

        BlackGriffen
  • Finding water in it's solid form taking up percentages of the soil instead of topping out at maybe one percent is amazing. This puts a whole new perspective on the whole hydrosphere of Mars. If they also find ice in the northern hemisphere it would be even better. (for humans the northern hemisphere is much more practical, less storms, lower overall elevation [radiation] more evidence of recent liquid water)
    Now all we need is geothermal water, greenhouse gasses, a spacecraft that can accellerate continuously at 1 g for half the ride and brake at 1 g for the other half (creating a 40 hour journey to Mars) and the planet is ours..moahhh ha ha ha.... oops sorry about the last part.

  • FYI (Score:1)

    by corren ( 559473 )
    I just finished reading an excellent trilogy on Mars Colonization, and even though this is a little off topic, I strongly recommend them.

    They are: By Kim Stanley Robinson.

    These are some of the best science fiction books I've ever read, and if you're into Mars, I bet you'll really enjoy these.

    -Corren
  • This is a wonderful discovery, however, I thought we've suspected for some time that there's polar ice-caps though. And so those clouds that the rover saw sometime ago could in fact have been water clouds(I think they thought it was some other toxic substance)? So the fact that there's water and that we seem to be heading towards a future of profitable martian water companies. So what's missing is a greenhouse effect to make the temperature go up. I believe that this could solved by declaring Mars to be a smoking zone. The dwindling smoking areas on earth should produce the kind of tourism that would make martian exploration possible. Imagine the kind of funding that would be given by philip morris. We'd additionally eliminate the health threats of second hand smoking on earth by shipping them all out there and raise the temperature on mars by several degrees (Something on the order of Buffalo in February). It'll also make a nice dump site for our nuclear waste. Mars, the landfill of the solar system.

  • Miscellany (Score:3)

    by BlackGriffen ( 521856 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @03:53PM (#3098603)
    The really interesting part of this report is in the beginning: "The process continues generating a cascade of protons and neutrons in the upper few meters (yards) of the martian soil." What do they mean by the upper few meters? I would tend to think no more than a dozen, but that's the problem with language like "few". At any rate, this does not preclude the existence of water in the more central latitudes, it only rules out water 'close' to the surface. It's still possible that there are underground aquifers buried beyond the range of the method they used to detect hydrogen. Their own map even supports my theory; there are slightly bluish regions in figure three as far north as the equator (the limit of the map). Since the signal strength is dependent on both the depth and size of the hydrogen sample, this interpretation is highly probable, I think.

    This also has interesting consequences on the search for life on Mars: if they want the best odds of finding life, they will need to go to the edge of the region that has the water signals, and dig down until they hit the upper edge of the permafrost. Things like Viking and Sojourner (if it looked for life) only looked at the surface, and didn't have a good idea of where on the surface of the planet to land to look (I'm not sure where they landed, but I'm betting it wasn't outside of the 120 degree belt where the water signals are scarce [assuming the North and South poles are approximately the same]).

    I wonder why they didn't publish data for the North polar region? I find it hard to imagine that there was an asymmetry on the planet, or that the probe switched it's instruments off because they were only interested in one pole. I'm not implying that NASA is trying to hide anything, perhaps the data was symmetrical enough that they didn't want to waste their time publishing it on a preliminary report like this one. They may also not be finished crunching the data from the North, which would make this a very preliminary report. I'd still like to see the results for the whole of Mars, though.

    The last interesting possibility is that some of their data doesn't point at water at all. They have detected the presence of hydrogen, and water is only the most abundant hydrogen containing compound on Earth. Other chemicals that contain hydrogen that may (this is a big may) be present are: methane (CH4), lipids (too many to list), oil (again, many), ammonia (NH3), carbohydrates (name literally means that it contains carbon and hydrogen, e.g. C6H12O6) etc. What I'm saying is that there may be oil deposits on Mars (very slim chance, but not nonexistent). More likely it's just water and/or ammonia, but all this means is that I'm even more eager to at least send another probe that can test a sample for life and run a spectral analysis on a small core sample (assuming they can get the sample to the surface before it evaporates).

    I'd still like to go back to the Moon and get stations established there first (availability year round and shorter distance being two of the main reasons), but I am suddenly a lot more interested in going to Mars, too.

    BlackGriffen
    • I could be wrong (and please feel free to correct me!) but there is a pretty big difference between the northern and southern hemispheres on Mars.

      The northern hemisphere is much lower [geocities.com]. A hypothetical ocean on Mars would cover much of the northern hemisphere while leaving the south high and dry.

      Also the polls themselves have different amounts CO2 ("dry") ice.
  • Haven't we screwed up our planet enough? Why would we even want to go to Mars without even figuring out how to provide a decent, respectable life for people here? It's not like we need to just keep spreading expodentially over the entire damn universe.

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