Ice cliffs found on Mars and NASA says they’re a tap for astronauts Mars boffins have spotted lots of almost-pure water ice on Mars. Detailed in a Science paper titled ” Exposed subsurface ice sheets in the Martian mid-latitudes”, the find was made using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The scientists who tend that instrument spotted …
The 'boffins' always seem to suggest that getting there is the difficult bit, the living there and the teraforming parts are a doddle.
We should land a bunch of Elonites onto central Antarctica with only what you can parachute in from orbit and see how they get on, it'll be infinitely more easy to find water, use solar power, grow food etc there so it should be a complete piece of piss.
From the blurb of Science Magazine:
Some locations on Mars are known to have water ice just below the surface, but how much has remained unclear. Dundas et al. used data from two orbiting spacecraft to examine eight locations where erosion has occurred. This revealed cliffs composed mostly of water ice, which is slowly sublimating as it is exposed to the atmosphere. The ice sheets extend from just below the surface to a depth of 100 meters or more and appear to contain distinct layers, which could preserve a record of Mars' past climate. They might even be a useful source of water for future human exploration of the red planet.
And the actual abstract itself
Thick deposits cover broad regions of the Martian mid-latitudes with a smooth mantle; erosion in these regions creates scarps that expose the internal structure of the mantle. We investigated eight of these locations and found that they expose deposits of water ice that can be >100 meters thick, extending downward from depths as shallow as 1 to 2 meters below the surface. The scarps are actively retreating because of sublimation of the exposed water ice. The ice deposits likely originated as snowfall during Mars’ high-obliquity periods and have now compacted into massive, fractured, and layered ice. We expect the vertical structure of Martian ice-rich deposits to preserve a record of ice deposition and past climate.
Impressive telemetry must backup such confident assertions.
Based on the description, a more efficient collection device might be something similar to the design of a solar evaporative distillers collection film.
Since the ice is sublimating it should be possible to capture the sublimate and through suitable processes using currently available tech convert it to a usable product with minimal energy input.
Can we not do anything without destroying the environment in the name of science? This then becomes commercial and gets even worse.
Mars (as is the moon and quite a few other places) are littered with crap that we sent up and discarded when it has reached the end of its life, broken or failed before it even got there.
How confident can anyone be that sending Cassini with a plutonium power pack into Saturn's upper gas layer has burnt it to a crisp? It has still left (albeit very small) amount of extra-planetary material behind.
I am all for science but it does make a mess and there appears to be little incentive to clear up afterwards.
Cassini was deliberately crashed into Saturn as the route least likely to contaminate any environments out there. Left to just fly around for long enough it was likely to crash (uncontrolled) into one of the various moons, with a much higher risk of leaving bits behind.
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