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Humanity has a better idea of where to settle March.
NASA plans to begin launching crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s, with the goal of establishing a research outpost on the Red Planet in the relatively near future. For such a base to be sustainable in the long term, its occupants must live off the land, tapping into local resources where possible, agency officials said.
The most important of these resources is water ice, which can not only help keep the pioneers of Mars alive but also facilitate their return journeys to Earth. (Water can be broken down into its constituents hydrogen and oxygen, the main components of rocket fuel.) Setting up a base near accessible water also makes scientific sense, as there may be signs of Life on Mars, if it ever existed, could be found in or near such places.
This base will likely be built in the Martian mid-latitudes, which have a lot of water ice and enough heat and sun to make operations feasible. The poles are very icy but also cold and dark; Equatorial regions are warm and bright, by Martian standards, but also relatively dry. Mid-latitude terrain also tends to be at low elevations, making it easier to touch down human-class heavy landers, NASA officials said. (It’s helpful to have more atmosphere slowing spacecraft to pass through, since the air on Mars is only 1% as thick as that on Earth.)
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Hidden ice on Mars
The mid-latitude ice of Mars is buried under the famous red earth of the planet. But NASA and its exploration partners now have a better idea of where the most accessible pockets are, thanks to a project called Subsurface Water Ice Mapping (SWIM), which is being led by the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. , and managed. by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
SWIM analyzes data collected over the past two decades by three NASA orbiters – the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor – using five different remote sensing techniques, including neutron spectroscopy and radar. (The Mars Global Surveyor mission officially ended in 2007, but the other two orbiters are still functioning strong.)
“Ultimately, NASA tasked the SWIM project with figuring out how far from the equator you can travel to find ground ice,” Sydney Do, Mars Water Mapping Project Manager at JPL said in a statement from NASA. “Imagine we had drawn a wavy line across Mars representing this ice boundary. This data allows us to draw this line with a thinner pen instead of a thick marker and focus on the more parts of that line. close to the equator. “
The SWIM team has just published its first results, in an article published online on Monday February 8 in the Nature Astronomy journal. And these results are encouraging from a crewed exploration perspective, revealing that large bands of mid-latitudes show traces of buried ice at depths ranging from only an inch or two (a few centimeters) to 0.6 miles ( 1 kilometer).
A vital Martian resource
The new study does not flag specific sites for future crewed landings, team members said. But it serves as a resource for people who will make such decisions later, if all goes according to plan.
“Of course, delivering humans safely to Mars and ensuring their survival requires many other considerations beyond in situ use of water resources, including the safety of landing sites and solar and thermal specifications. “says Gareth Morgan, lead author of the study, senior scientist at Planetary Science. Institute, said in a separate statement.
“Defining these site requirements is beyond the scope of the SWIM project and would be premature, given that all human mission plans to Mars are still at the conceptual stage,” Morgan added. “We provide a hemispherical perspective of ice distribution to support initial landing site studies and allow the community to explore the range of Martian terrains that host the ice.
The image of ice could brighten considerably in the years to come, especially if a NASA orbiter called the Mars Ice Mapper takes off from the ground. NASA discusses the Mars Ice Mapper concept with space agencies from Japan, Canada and Italy, which could join us as partners. The mission could end up being launched as early as 2026, agency officials said.
And there are a lot of spaceship action coming to the red planet very soon. The orbiters operated by the United Arab Emirates and China are expected to arrive on March Tuesday (February 9) and Wednesday (February 10), respectively. And NASA’s next Martian rover, Perseverance, will land on February 18.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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