
Buried Ice Water Discovered on Mars - almost_usual
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/steep-slopes-on-mars-reveal-structure-of-buried-ice
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ChuckMcM
In general this is pretty awesome. What we now know are:

1) Earth microbes and soil organisms (worms) can live in hydrated martian
soil. ([https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/mars-soil-
earthw...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/mars-soil-earthworm-
agriculture-science-spd/))

2) Food plants can grow in martian soil that has had said organisms added to
it.([https://www.nasa.gov/feature/farming-in-martian-
gardens](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/farming-in-martian-gardens))

3) The water to hydrate the soil is already on Mars.(this article)

4) We can build an artificial magnetosphere[1] to protect an area from solar
radiation.

So one trip to Mars that can land a small (< 100kW) power plant, organic
amendments, tools, and material for a pressurized green house will be able to
create a 'farm' on Mars. That is pretty neat.

[1] They designed it for spacecraft propulsion but it has the effect of a
shield if installed in a ground station.
[http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/M2P2/theory.html](http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/M2P2/theory.html)

~~~
justinjlynn
That is indeed awesome but I would argue that it also means we would need to
undertake a much more thorough search to find out of mars is indeed a dead
planet. Once we land a large concentration of biological matter there -- we
won't have an opportunity to look again without dealing with massive potential
for cross-planetary contamination.

Of course, it's a trade off and it's great news if we ever had to undertake a
crash program to get at least a few humans and/or earth originated genetic
material off planet with any hope of it surviving without extensive
terraforming.

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zipwitch
If we want to search Mars for life before we contaminate it then we need to
launch a crash program to do so _now_ , because our window is swiftly
expiring. Right now a small group with minimal resources (on the to build and
launch stuff into space scale) could likely launch a cubesat with some sort of
bacterial payload that would eventually get to Mars. Such a stunt is only
going to get easier in the next few decades.

Explore Mars, in depth, ASAP, or someone will render the issue moot by
starting their own terraforming project on the cheap. (Or the not so cheap. I
don't believe Musk's colonization plans -if they ever come to pass- would be
able to prevent contamination, no matter how hard they might try.)

~~~
rev_bird
>could likely launch a cubesat with some sort of bacterial payload that would
eventually get to Mars

Curious how this might work, given the energy required not only to escape
Earth's orbit, but to get into another one around Mars and crash into it. It's
my understanding that cubesats don't have anything that could do any of that
stuff, and a larger craft doing the heavy lifting would be way more
complicated.

~~~
TeMPOraL
A solar sail and a bit of patience?

It would take some serious engineering chops to pull it off, but it's not
totally implausible.

~~~
rev_bird
Sorry, I realize now that I may have sounded sarcastic. I really was curious,
this makes sense. Thanks for responding.

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mncharity
The original title is "Steep Slopes on Mars Reveal Structure of Buried Ice".
The HN title "Buried Ice Water Discovered on Mars" is misleading - we've known
about large midlatitude underground ice deposits for some years now.

~~~
mirimir
Right. "Ice water" makes no sense. If anything, "water ice':

> The ice was likely deposited as snow long ago. The deposits are exposed in
> cross section as relatively pure water ice, capped by a layer one to two
> yards (or meters) thick of ice-cemented rock and dust.

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larrymcp
Right, exactly. The article does contain the phrase "water ice" a few times.

"Ice water" would be something that is served in the _restaurants_ on Mars.

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daveguy
The images are impressively detailed, but first impression is probaby. Water?
How do they know from a picture of a cliff?

Water has been confirmed by spectroscopy, thermal imaging and (previously)
radar.

From the article:

"Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) confirmed that
the bright material is frozen water. A check of the surface temperature using
Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera helped researchers
determine they're not seeing just thin frost covering the ground.

Researchers previously used MRO's Shallow Radar (SHARAD) to map extensive
underground water-ice sheets in middle latitudes of Mars and estimate that the
top of the ice is less than about 10 yards beneath the ground surface."

~~~
kurthr
I agree, the SHARAD work was amazing to use mixed mode Radar to image the
subsurface ice tomographically (by reconstructing synthetic aperture radar
from multiple passes of 2? different radar frequencies from many orbits with
limited antenna time).

This is really the first time frozen water (not just frost) has been SEEN with
an imaging spectrometer!

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gilgoomesh
I hope so but this type of finding has been wrong before. See the recent
discrediting of liquid "brines" on Mars:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910351...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103516306029)

Until a rover or other probe tests it directly, I'll remain skeptical.

~~~
djsumdog
Also, if this is accurate, how do we know it's water? I mean most likely it
is, but is there a potential for it to be some other type of frozen liquid?
Potentially a non-drinking one?

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azernik
Spectroscopy.

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dgudkov
Apparently, the first resource to be mined on Mars will be water ice.

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Edmond
We'll have people living in the "belts" working as ice haulers :) There is a
great show called "The Expanse" that touches on this.

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bestest
The book (or rather books) is even better!

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King-Aaron
Upvoting both of you for referencing The Expanse (And the books, i.e Leviathan
Wakes)... It's so good to see something that resembles hard-sci-fi on
television.

~~~
ant6n
The Expanse does resemble hard sci-fi. But besides the issue of gravity, its
especially the issue of water (ice) where they seem to deviate from reality.

Basically Ceres is made out of ice - why would they need ice haulers to bring
ice there; how could there possibly be a water shortage?

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will_hughes
This is already covered in the book. The water ice on Ceres had already been
used up in the colonisation efforts of Earth and then later: Mars.

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everdev
Would this water be drinkable if we inhabit Mars?

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azernik
Maybe not directly - who knows what's dissolved in there.

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aaomidi
Yeah but it wouldn't be that hard to seperate the water.

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rubrick85
That looks like the Estonian flag.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Estonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Estonia)

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jv22222
> "Astronauts could essentially just go there with a bucket and a shovel and
> get all the water they need,"

That's so awesome.

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akasian
Start the reactor. Free Mars.

~~~
djsumdog
I swear I saw Hiroko.

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yazaddaruvala
I really wish NASA made the joke, "it feels like we knew nothing about Mars?
and all of a sudden we achieved Total Recall!!!"

