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Mars

Water Ice Buried At Mars' Equator Is Over 2 Miles Thick (space.com) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the new-discoveries dept.
Keith Cooper reports via Space.com: A European Space Agency (ESA) probe has found enough water to cover Mars in an ocean between 4.9 and 8.9 feet (1.5 and 2.7 meters) deep, buried in the form of dusty ice beneath the planet's equator. The finding was made by ESA's Mars Express mission, a veteran spacecraft that has been engaged in science operations around Mars for 20 years now. While it's not the first time that evidence for ice has been found near the Red Planet's equator, this new discovery is by far the largest amount of water ice detected there so far and appears to match previous discoveries of frozen water on Mars.

"Excitingly, the radar signals match what we expect to see from layered ice and are similar to the signals we see from Mars' polar caps, which we know to be very ice rich," said lead researcher Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States in an ESA statement. The deposits are thick, extended 3.7km (2.3) miles underground, and topped by a crust of hardened ash and dry dust hundreds of meters thick. The ice is not a pure block but is heavily contaminated by dust. While its presence near the equator is a location more easily accessible to future crewed missions, being buried so deep means that accessing the water-ice would be difficult.
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Water Ice Buried At Mars' Equator Is Over 2 Miles Thick More

Water Ice Buried At Mars' Equator Is Over 2 Miles Thick

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  • Get your ass to Mars

    • We could probably use it to give Mars and atmosphere (spoiler). But I think the solar wind would strip it away again in time. What we really need is to run some massive super conducting wires around the planet several times and make a planet-sized electromagnet to deflect charged particles. Simple, I can get started with a few trillion small donations to my GoFundMe.

      • "In time" meaning a million years. If we were able to give Mars a meaningful atmosphere, we wouldn't need to care about the magnetic field. Except for aesthetic reasons, since the solar wind would make it look like hazy shit.

      • You only need a very small satellite in the L point between mars and sun to make a magnetic field.
        Mars it self would hold an atmosphere for millions of years without any magnetic field.

        • You only need a very small satellite in the L point between mars and sun to make a magnetic field. Mars it self would hold an atmosphere for millions of years without any magnetic field.

          My thoughts too: NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere [phys.org] -- Google: mars protect solar wind Lagrange [google.com]

          Though these guys say that won't really work: The Mars’ magnetic shield would not work [primordialscoop.org], based on how much atmosphere is lost due the the solar winds and how quickly it could be re-generated.

          [half way down: math, assumptions, math] ...

          This translates into a requirement for ten million years to increase the mass of the Martian atmosphere by a single percent.

          • Well,
            we will - I'm probably dead already then - try to Terra form Mars.
            One way or the other we will succeed.

            The main problem will be to prevent a mob/MAFIA popping up there to seize control.

            If you have not read it yet, try the "mars trilogy" Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars.

            • If you have not read it yet, try the "mars trilogy" Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars.

              Thanks! I think I've got those somewhere, but have only read the first one, "Red Mars". I'll dig them up ...

              • Considering that it is a SF story it is close to fitting current times and current research ... now the findings of huge amount of water / ice.

                Interesting times we live in!

      • We need Amy Wongâ(TM)s PhD thesis.

    • For all mankind! And grow me some potatoes while you're at it.

  • Seems like O(30) 100-kiloton bombs could blow that much material out of the way under ideal circumstances, and that's without doing any shaped charges. Maybe we should just bomb our way to the water. It's not like we're going to destroy any interesting archaeological finds or kill any life forms at this point. You wouldn't even have to go nuclear to pull that off.

    • It's called Lake Chagan.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      And it is still less than healthy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      You wouldn't even have to go nuclear to pull that off.

      Just to clarify, for 100-kiloton yield, you probably would have to go nuclear or similar; I think the largest conventional boms are only about 1/200th of that. What I meant was that if you used shaped charges to focus the blast, you could probably pull it off with a large-ish number of bunker buster bombs or similar. Maybe not, just speculating here.

    • It's not like we're going to destroy any interesting archaeological finds or kill any life forms at this point.

      That's what the Martians want you to think.

      • It's not like we're going to destroy any interesting archaeological finds or kill any life forms at this point.

        That's what the Martians want you to think.

        Well the joke is on them then.

  • Wish I was totally kidding about that.

  • Dusty ice? (Score:3)

    by sonoronos ( 610381 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @03:16AM (#64174649)

    Seriously? This is the terminology that they are using for mars crust that has a fraction of a percent of liquid water?

    • Seriously? This is the terminology that they are using for mars crust that has a fraction of a percent of liquid water?

      It's like calling the inner city "prosperous poverty".

  • Looks like were really do need oil drillers rather than astronauts. How could I have questioned you Mr Bay? I am not worthy /s
  • They could also be hydrates [wikipedia.org], containing CO2 or CH4. The estimated temperature gradient of Mars is much lower that the Earth one, and this increases the probabilities for clathrate to exist.

    • The estimated temperature gradient of Mars is much lower that the Earth one, and this increases the probabilities for clathrate to exist.

      The gradient? I've done enough clathrate-hunting (they're a real hazard to drilling, and also a problem in production - gumming up valves and pipelines if you don't do your decompression procedures correctly ; I've had friends interviewed by the police over getting it wrong) over the years, and I don't seem much influence of temperature gradient.

      Regardless of which, you'v

  • Can we send Musk and all the other assholes there already?

    • No room for Musk et. al. Falcon-X has already contracted to send 10,000 snot-nosed Trotsky-slut Quislings to low-earth orbit ... and then on to Mars. Should the Mars-bound  3-rd stage rockets fail  a burning Earth re-entry over Antarctica is planned. 
    • There's not enough propellant in the entire inner solar system to fuel enough rockets to transport even a fraction of all the assholes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You are not wrong. So maybe make it the rich and powerful assholes as a good start?

  • Deep (Score:3)

    by PuddleBoy ( 544111 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @09:36AM (#64174903)

    "...being buried so deep means that accessing the water-ice would be difficult."

    No kidding.

    Think about this if it were on Earth. You suddenly find yourself with no surface water, but you think there is 'frozen damp dirt' 2.3 miles below the surface. How much energy/effort/resources would you need to expend to recover enough liquid water to make the enterprise worthwhile?

    I think the finding is interesting, but hinting that it might help future explorers makes me think 'clickbait'.

  • We've had a few rovers there roaming for years, not one single fossil found. The places is barren. B-A-R-R-E-N. I still wanna go though.

    • I have a feeling when humans get there it won't be long until fossils are found. It's not like a rover can pick up a piece of shale and split it open.

    • The media doesn't talk about it much, but many rock formations that are almost certainly stromatalite fossils have been found. Here is one example. You can find many more with Google. The stromatalite-like formations are why NASA keeps sending rovers to dry lake beds. https://www.hindawi.com/journa... [hindawi.com]
      • Speaking as a geologist who does have stromatolite fossils in his collection, which I collected myself out of the country rock .. I'm intrigued at the confidence of someone who thinks they can be identified at range.

        But on a certain level, you're probably right about them (or their possibility) being why NASA is persisting with the rovers.

        I bet that link you're advertising is utterly hilarious. Are you being well paid?

        I didn't recognise the name. But having ploughed through pages of finest-grade regurgit

  • Was this written by the department of redundancy department?

    • In space science, the term 'ice' can refer to many different substances.

      In astrophysics and planetary science the term "ice" refers to volatile chemical compounds with freezing points above about 100 K, such as water, ammonia, or methane - wikipedia (Ice Giant)

  • In other words, Mars is *extremely* dry. (Score:4, Informative)

    by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @11:01PM (#64176109) Journal

    A European Space Agency (ESA) probe has found enough water to cover Mars in an ocean between 4.9 and 8.9 feet (1.5 and 2.7 meters)

    For comparison, the average (arithmetic mean) water depth on Earth is about 3km (however many feet. 10 thousand or so?).

    Yes, compared to Earth, Mars is an extraordinarily dry planet. Dry enough to pose some problems for models of planetary formation - Earth has about 3000km surface thickness worth (plus about as much dissolved in the mantle) ; Venus doesn't have a huge amount in it's atmosphere - about half that of Earth when you total the 90-odd atmospheres of "atmosphere" (around 10 MPa), plus an unknown amount in it's mantle. Mercury ... almost none, and who or what removed half it's thickness of mantle (and 60-odd% of it's mantle volume)? Mars - has very little near-surface water (as this paper says), an unknown amount in it's mantle (not zero - see evidence for occasional continuing volcanic activity ; but it has around a tenth of the mantle of Earth or Venus), and no reason to think there is more in it's core than any of the other terrestrial planets.

    The generally accepted paradigm of water being added to the terrestrial planets after the "Era of Giant Impacts" ended would suggest considerably more water was on Mars, say a billion years after the end of planet construction (say, 100 Myr after the construction start ; call it 4450 Myr ago for a round number). But where is it now? Damned good question. (The telly is playing, and Poirot's little grey cells are being exercised. But that's a Japp-ism rather than a Poirot-ism.)

    Say this nominal 2.7m of water were melted out. It would all drain into the Hellas Basin in the Southern Highlands and into the North Polar Basin. There it might get to 10m average depth. For comparison with the 5km average depth in the Earth's Ocean basins.

  • There's a water ice store on Mars? (said with a Philadelphia accent) ;-)

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