Scientists Just Found a 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon (interestingengineering.com) 37
Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA). And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules. Interesting Engineering reports: The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet's landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars' soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface. "FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water," said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science's lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.
"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.
"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water -- far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.
"The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers," read a tweet on the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it's too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done. A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn't distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.
"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water -- far more water than we expected," said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures." So while we don't yet know the specific form of water is lying under Mars' vast system of canyons, the first human mission to Mars may consider exploring this area a major priority.
Sweet! So how soon can we... (Score:1)
...buy some bottled Ares Natural Spring Water at Costco?
Re:Sweet! So how soon can we... (Score:5, Funny)
Re-evaluate the Labeled Release Viking Experiment (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Re-evaluate the Labeled Release Viking Experim (Score:2)
"The 1976 Viking Labeled Release (LR) experiment was positive for extant microbial life on the surface of Mars. Experiments on both Viking landers, 4000 miles apart, yielded similar, repeatable, positive responses."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Many scientists are not confident ruling out odd soil chemistry.
This is my mild amusement. (Score:2)
I mean, on some level there's an inner nerd jumping up and down and getting out the party hats, but I'm having a hard time thinking this is as major a discovery as they're making it out to be. We knew there was moisture on Mars. Is it really shocking that there's noticeable quantities of it in what's essentially a permanently frozen area?
I suppose now there's a target for the fuel processing plant we'll eventually want there if we're gonna have return trips for whoever ends up tossing rockets at the surfa
Re:This is my mild amusement. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, we have long known that the polar ice caps are mostly water ice. Millions of cubic kilometres of it.
And what did they think the canals were for?
Re: (Score:2)
s/think/dream/
Re: (Score:3)
but I'm having a hard time thinking this is as major a discovery as they're making it out to be.
Well, this stuff is permafrost. When the permafrost melted in Siberia, it revealed some very well preserved mammoths.
So when we melt the Martian permafrost, maybe we will find . . . Martian Mammoths!
Toss in some DNA CRISPRing and cloning technology . . . and who knows what we'll be able to barbecue up on Mars!
Re: (Score:2)
The top couple of metres of some Siberian permafrost melts in the summer.
The other permafrost in the region - up to nearly 2km thick, hasn't melted. Yet. And is trapping a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
But I doubt that'll disturb you.
"Assuming" (Score:4, Interesting)
That's always a word that one approaches with a degree of caution. The obvious question that arises is what hydrogen-containing molecules will produce the same response and what are the probabilities of, say, the three most likely molecules? (If water wouldn't be one of the top three, then three plus water.)
Unless water is the only realistic molecule that would produce that result, then we're looking at a mix of things. Which is surely much more interesting than just looking at water, because you'd be looking at things that may have been the result of something reacting with water. Which would require the something to have been there and may have required there to have been some additional energy.
Seeing just water would tell you an awful lot of what wasn't happening, which may have its own interest if some of those things would have been expected.
Still, we really need to get more probes around Mars. I don't know if they have anything capable of GPR, I think that was one of the failed missions, but they really need that capability to understand the bigger picture. A gravity map of Mars, using the same accelerometer trick used to map the gravity of Earth, would also be very nice and help to get a good picture of what's going on. Yeah, yeah, I want to know every little detail and I want to know it now. I'm a geek, it's my job to want to know more.
Re: (Score:1)
Still, we really need to get more probes around Mars. I don't know if they have anything capable of GPR, I think that was one of the failed missions
GPR is ground based. RIMFAX [wikipedia.org] is a GPR on Mars already. In space, there are sounding radars, SHARAD [wikipedia.org] and MARSIS [wikipedia.org].
A gravity map of Mars, using the same accelerometer trick used to map the gravity of Earth, would also be very nice and help to get a good picture of what's going on.
A gravity map exists. [nasa.gov]Accelerometers generally aren't good enough to map gravity on Earth, but are getting closer. You need a gravity meter. From space you just track the satellite. No instrument needed other than what you need to position the space craft.
Yeah, yeah, I want to know every little detail and I want to know it now. I'm a geek, it's my job to want to know more.
It's all there on the internet already. I don't think there's any RIMFAX data yet, since last month I helped a coworker review their data fo
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, GRACE can be considered to be just tracking. https://www.earthdate.org/meas... [earthdate.org]
GOCE is different, however. According to the ESA: "GOCE’s main instrument was the Electrostatic Gravity Gradiometer (EGG), a set of six 3-axis accelerometers mounted in a diamond configuration in an ultra-stable structure." https://www.esa.int/Applicatio... [esa.int]
Not all GPR is on the surface. "Successful detection of crevasses from helicopter-borne ground penetrating radar." https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Not ideal (Score:2)
It seems like dirty ice, so it would require a major operation to extract. The state of robotics and our ability to design things for automation is shitty. Robotics and design-for-automation is harder than rocket science and brain surgery. It would be a significant effort to develop robots that can setup and do mining and processing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Not ideal (Score:2)
The biggest reason to mine the water is to provide enough fuel (several Olympic size swimming pools worth) or high quality methane and lox. That requires infrastructure to locate and mine the ice, build and use a facility to extract and purify water, build and use a factory that can perform the sebatier process on a large scale, package the methane, fuel the rocket. All without people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It may be too risky to involve astronauts in mining operations. We can't even do that safely on Earth let alone wearing a spacesuit. Heck I don't think they should be sent until there is a refueled starship already available to them.
Re: (Score:2)
It may be too risky to involve astronauts in mining operations. We can't even do that safely on Earth let alone wearing a spacesuit.
Why would you assume that this wouldn't involve telerobotics? I don't see any spacesuits being required.
Re: Not ideal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, thanks for correcting me on the Olympic pool estimate .. but I still I think building the infrastructure for mining on Mars will be very difficult/expensive. We'll know in a few years I guess.
Mineral laden ice! (Score:2)
Dehydrate that water, and ship those grams of virility promoting minerals back to Earth where they can be blended into water once again. Ka-ching!
Don't forget the volcano (Score:2)
Perseverance just found evidence lava once flowed on Mars [cnn.com].
Re: (Score:3)
We already knew that the planet containing the solar system's largest volcano once had lava. The news is that the particular site being studied had lava.
So Close.. Need Better Acronym Engineers (Score:2)
Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND)
Now if they had called it Fine Resolution Epithermal Instrument for Neutron Detection they could have called it FRIEND (later to be replaced by the Epithermal Neutron Exposure Measuring Instrument, or ENEMI - that Y is tough to engineer).
"Start the reactor" (Score:2)
Mars is still a crappy place (Score:2)
Even in the most extreme climate-change catastrophe scenario _and_ in the middle of a dessert, Earth is massively superior in every respect.
science! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't have the time for it, you're going to be floundering a
Of course, they miss out the important bit. (Score:2)
(As a sideline, that 40% figure is suspiciously close to the pore-space for a close packing of uniform-size spheres. Which would be a very unusual sediment.)
So to extract it, at some point you're going to have to either melt the water, or provide the energy to break the rock up into small fragments to feed int