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Mars NASA Space United States Technology

An Underground Ice Deposit On Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico (popularmechanics.com) 113

Posted by BeauHD from the bigger-than-expected dept.
schwit1 quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: A single underground deposit of ice on Mars contains about as much water as there is in Michigan's Lake Superior, according to new research from NASA. The deposit rests in the mid-northern latitudes of the Red Planet, specifically in the Utopia Planitia region. Discovered by the Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARD) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the deposit is "more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico," according to a NASA press release. It ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, and has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well. None of the ice is exposed to the surface. At various points the dirt covering it is in between 3 and 33 feet thick.
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An Underground Ice Deposit On Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico More

An Underground Ice Deposit On Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico

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  • Dispatch from the Red Planet (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @02:12AM (#53363887) Journal
    The Council of the Elders met in counsel to discuss the latest developments. All Martians waited to hear the news. Some came to wait outside the headquarters, others listened on the Ber'gor network. The doors opened, and a security detail walked out (with their gelsacs swollen), followed by K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of the Elders, who paused to look over the gathered crowd. Soon he gathered his thoughts and began to speak:

    Reports that our treasure has been discovered by the Earthlings have been far overstated. Our receivers have determined that initial reports were wrong, they merely found our waste pile in the northern wasteland. Our refuse has been covered there, mixed with rock and dirt, buried to keep it away from us. Be assured that the true heart of Martian treasure remains concealed well in the southern reaches.

    And with that, he turned and exited.

  • Well that seems plenty of water to supply a closed loop greenhouse system. Mars here we come!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      It's probably still heavily mixed with salts and/or chlorine compounds. They might be solid inclusions because of the freezing process, but it will still be necessary to treat the water before using. That's not to say the water isn't immensely useful -- it will be! It just may take more work than "hey let's put a farm next to it and mine ice".

      • It's probably still heavily mixed with salts and/or chlorine compounds. They might be solid inclusions because of the freezing process, but it will still be necessary to treat the water before using. That's not to say the water isn't immensely useful -- it will be! It just may take more work than "hey let's put a farm next to it and mine ice".

        Too bad there isn't some simple process to purify water, I mean really simple, like boiling-water and condensing-steam simple...

        Ah well. I guess purifying dirty water is still beyond our technical abilities.

        0_o

        Strat

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tomhath ( 637240 )
          Too bad this water isn't a big salty sea that can be tapped and pumped out. An underground deposit of ice mixed with sand spread out over an area of 120,000 square miles would require a lot of energy and heavy equipment to mine/transport/purify. .

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Too bad there isn't some simple process to purify water, I mean really simple, like boiling-water and condensing-steam simple...

          Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

          And it's not just perchlorates in there. There's arsenic, hexavalent chromium, you name it. At one NASA conference, there was a glacier expert who suggested just this - going to an ice deposit on Mars, diggi

          • Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

            So, the studies you refer to NASA performing regarding extraction of H2O from Martian soil somehow were able to take into account the large deposits of relatively pure (compared to plain Martian soil) water-ice deposits that were *just discovered*? Was not aware NASA had broken the time-barrier.

            Pop quiz: Are the temperatures and vapor-pressures the same or far different between water and those contaminants? What temperature does water boil at compared to those other chemicals and compounds at a far lower ai

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              So, the studies you refer to NASA performing regarding extraction of H2O from Martian soil somehow were able to take into account the large deposits of relatively pure (compared to plain Martian soil) water-ice deposits that were *just discovered*? Was not aware NASA had broken the time-barrier.

              Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery. Phoenix landed on one. Want to see Martian ice? Here you go [nasa.gov]

              Pop quiz: Are the temperatures and vapor-pressure

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rei ( 128717 )

                ** ISRU

              • Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery.

                Did you even read TFS?

                " It ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, and has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

                That's "shallow permafrost" to you?

                There is no "very high relative concentration of water-ice".

                And again:

                "...has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

                Look, it's obvious you're being disingenuous here and I'm wasting my time and energy replying to any of your other claims

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Rei ( 128717 )

                  Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery.
                  That's "shallow permafrost" to you?

                  Shallow = low overburden

                  "...has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

                  Which is in no way, shape or form a "very high relative concentration of ice". If you think this is, I recommend you make yourself a mixture of 50-85% ice, 15-50% rock, dust and sand, and drink it.

                  • Shallow = low overburden

                    Translation: "Words mean whatever I want them to mean and I can change their context afterwards to fit my agenda!"

                    Which is in no way, shape or form a "very high relative concentration of ice". If you think this is, I recommend you make yourself a mixture of 50-85% ice, 15-50% rock, dust and sand, and drink it.

                    I do every day, from even lower concentrations of water and higher concentrations of sand & rock. It's this thing called a "well". Amazing technology. You should read-up on this technical wonder.

                    Strat

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Rei ( 128717 )

                      Shallow = low overburden

                      Translation: "Words mean whatever I want them to mean and I can change their context afterwards to fit my agenda!"

                      No, words mean what words mean. When you're talking about mining, "shallow" means "low overburden" [google.is]. If you're talking about thickness of a deposit, you refer to... wait for it.... "thickness" [google.is].

                      It's not my fault if you want to misuse terminology.

                      I do every day, from even lower concentrations of water and higher concentrations of sand & rock. It's this thing called a "

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Rei ( 128717 )

                      The concentration of water in this location is just as high or higher than in most aquifers

                      That would be a fine response if we were talking about an aquifer. It is not an aquifer. An aquifer is solid rock, not dust and debris, and full of liquid water, not solid. It's an absurd comparison because you can't just drill a well into permafrost and pump water out. Not that "drilling a well into permafrost" is an easy task to begin with regardless. If you melt permafrost you don't get water, you get sludge.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
              My kingdom for mod points. Rei has it here.

          • And in case you didn't know, we don't exactly have a bunch of nuclear powered Martian backhoes sitting around.

            Whelp, that problem's solved! Seriously, though, the Soviets did a ton of work on nuclear-powered everything. If humans decided to work together...

          • Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

            And it's not just perchlorates in there. There's arsenic, hexavalent chromium, you name it.

            Wow. So... We'll need 2 Brita / Pur filters? :-)

  • Michigan's Lake Superior (Score:3)

    by quenda ( 644621 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @04:01AM (#53364119)

    > as much water as there is in Michigan's Lake Superior,

    So what is that? Aboutr 40% the volume of Lake Superior?
    More than Minnesota's part, but less than Canada's? Or has Trump annexed the whole lake already?

  • This makes several Mars mission plans feasible (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @04:09AM (#53364131)

    Prior to this, the assumption was that the moisture percentage in the soil was only a few percent. This meant that to get water for a large greenhouse or to electrolyze to hydrogen to fuel a methane ascent rocket, you'd need a bulldozer and a large oven and rock crusher. Heavy stuff and hardly worth sending to Mars unless you were doing missions on a large scale (easier to just send the water you need and liquid hydrogen as payload on the lander).

    If there really is a massive frozen lake of mostly water just a few feet down, you could land on a spot where the soil is thin and drill down. Maybe evaporate the water by sending hot CO2 down the hole or something, and collecting the moisture in the steam that rises back up. (you get the CO2 by compressing martian atmosphere and then heating it)

    This seems a lot more feasible, though doing it using a purely robotic lander would still be very hard.

    • Yes, you would need al that heavy machinery, but only if you ignore the existance of explosives. For a seppo, thats a bit surprising.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Explosives would work great, but only if you ignore the existence of sublimation when the now fractured ice gets exposed to the Martian atmosphere.

    • Hmmm! Anybody remember the international discussions about using clean hydrogen fusion devices to excavate large areas of terrain (or whatever it is called on Mars)? And how these issues got scuppered by SALT and SALT II, along with the space nuclear bans.
      Among the last nuclear testing done by the (now defunct) USSR, they produced a device that yielded 95% fusion and only 5% fission from the trigger, with really low levels of radioactive residue - almost all of which comes from the fission component of th

      • How is this more reasonable than sending lightweight mirrors to Martian orbit? Per unit of mass, this would allow you to get massive heat fluxes for long periods without any contamination and also boost localized electricity production to boot. Neither would it waste the energy the way a nuke would, by trying to heat a flat region from a point source.

    • Maybe evaporate the water by sending hot CO2 down the hole or something

      Or just recirculate the re-heated steam?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Sounds like a pretty big power budget. If it's as little as three feet, couldn't we erect a airtight greenhouse, lay the ice bare and have solar collectors = mirrors heat it up until the ice melts by itself, then collect it like a well? And once you have some water I think you need to get some kind of steam engine or stirling engine going via solar concentrators, I don't think solar panels will cut it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      This seems a lot more feasible, though doing it using a purely robotic lander would still be very hard.

      While clearly this makes human habitation a lot more feasible, I don't see that humans add that much to the initial phase. It's going to be machines doing most of the work, and humans and their food and life support add a lot of mass and cost that could be applied to more useful things. I'd imagine a robotic bootstrap phase in which machines built a small functioning environment. This would be designed around the limitations of machines. A small follow-on crew would follow which would use more versatile

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Prior to this, the assumption was that the moisture percentage in the soil was only a few percent.

      The Phoenix lander would beg to disagree with you.

      ... you'd need a bulldozer and a large oven and rock crusher. Heavy stuff and hardly worth sending to Mars...

      This "ice" is still 20-50% rock. You still do.

      This has been another "Debbie Downer Talks about Mars"

    • suppose there is microbal, fungal or other underground life using this water? we'd be killing the martians!

  • WTF? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm still struggling with football pitches, olympic swimming pools and libraries of congress. How many of any of them make a New Mexico?

  • Standard Units (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Lake Michigan is in New Mexico?
    Why don't they use standard units like football fields, double-decker buses or, the correct one in this case, olympic sized swimming pools.

  • Is New Mexico big or small?

  • Sounds like it's time for Canada to build a floating wall, if Trumpsters are already trying to assert ownership over the whole body of water.

    Not to mention that Minnesota and Wisconsin share a bit of shoreline, and might object to the characterization.

  • "Michigan's Lake Superior" ?? !! The lake is shared by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north, the US state of Minnesota to the west, and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. Michigan's portion of it is significantly less that the entire lake's volume.
  • Are retarded. as Pleakley once said in "Lilo and Stitch" "Educate yourself!"
    • I recall back in the early days of the web - internet even - when it was populated mostly by people with CS and physics degrees and you could have intelligent, well reasoned discussions with knowledgeable people. Then someone said, we're leaving the rest of the world behind. That was the beginning of the end. Now instead of discussing something with perhaps the individual scientist who proposed something, you could be arguing with a 7th grader or drunk homeless person who never graduated from grade school

  • Lake Superior isn't a lake in Michigan. In fact, there are numerous states and provinces around Lake Superior.

    Michigan mainly has several of the lesser and dirtier great lakes on it's borders.

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