Scientists have created a new map that aims to identify the best sources of water on Mars.
Water is considered a critical resource to support future exploration activities on Mars. Scientists believe that the Red Planet contains large amounts of water. But searching the Earth for the best supplies is not easy.
The US space agency NASA has worked for years to identify the best places for such water. Most of the water on Mars exists as ice due to extremely cold temperatures.
A new study describes and provides a detailed mapping of the most likely areas containing water ice. The study appeared recently in Nature Astronomy. It is part of a project called Subsurface Water Ice Mapping or SWIM.
NASA says the SWIM project combines 20 years of data collected by several of the agency’s Mars explorers. Researchers at the Institute of Planetary Sciences in Tucson, Arizona, are conducting the research, with the support of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Gareth Morgan is a scientist at the Institute of Planetary Sciences and helped lead the research. He said in a statement: “The purpose of SWIM is to provide maps of potential buried ice deposit to support the selection of human landing sites. ”
He added that ice on Mars is an essential resource that could be used for many things, including providing drinking water to humans, growing plants for food and producing methane fuel and breathable air. “But the most important thing is to provide fuel for the journey back home to Earth,” Morgan said.
Researchers have already experimented with methods that could use water ice on Mars to produce fuel as well as oxygen.
Richard Davis is leading NASA’s efforts to find resources on Mars in preparation for sending humans to the Red Planet. He said identifying water sources on Mars could also help in the search for life, which would likely be found near water. “Next frontier for Mars is for human explorers to reach the surface and look for signs of microbial life, ”Davis said.
NASA says most scientists and engineers think they are the most handy underground the ice is underneath polar areas of Mars in the northern hemisphere. The new map focused on these areas – south of the polar region, but north of the equator – because they have more favorable conditions for humans. Spacecraft landings would also be easier there.
The map identifies two specific areas on Mars where underground ice could probably be found. The first one is among Plain in an area known as Arcadia Planitia. Scientists believe that the area was formed by ancient volcanic flows. The other contains glacier-floor planes filled in an area called Deuteronilus Mensae.
The study identified areas using five different methods that examined data sets from past Mars explorers. These included NASA Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor.
The process was not designed to measure water ice directly, Gareth Morgan explained. Instead, it was intended to predict the probability of an ice supply based on the observed conditions. He said things like high hydrogen levels and high speed radar waves could suggest ice. Scientists can also look at how fast temperatures change on a surface.
NASA says it intends to use the new research to prepare for talks with top experts to examine possible human landing areas on Mars.
NASA also recently announced that it has signed an agreement with international partners to develop a future robotic mapping on Mars. mission to look for ice water. The partnership includes space agencies from Italy, Canada and Japan.
Additional mapping efforts in the 2020s “could help carry out human missions to Mars as early as the 2030s,” NASA said. For now, NASA officials plan to continue searching for the best place on Mars to send astronauts so they have enough local ice-water resources to support their activities.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for Learning English, based on reports from NASA, Nature Astronomy and the Planetary Science Institute. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
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Words in this story
potential – adj. possible
deposit – n. a layer of a substance that has developed from a natural or chemical process
frontier – n. the limits of what is known or what has been done before in a field of knowledge or activity
underground – n. the area below the Earth’s surface
polar – adj. relating to the regions of the North or South Pole
simple – n. a large area of flat land
glacier – n. a very large area of ice that moves slowly on a slope or valley or on a large area of land
mission – n. the flight of a spacecraft to perform a particular task or task