Enlarge / While we know of locations with ice on Mars, not all of them are located in places we’d want to land. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Over the last couple of decades, plans to return to the Moon for longer stays or to go to Mars have gradually moved away from sci-fi tinged “what if” scenarios, and shifted to something that resembles actual planning. And those plans invariably include extracting water from local ice deposits. This water would obviously help support any astronauts during their stay, cutting down on the weight we’d have to shift out of Earth orbit. But it can also be a source of hydrogen that helps power the astronaut’s return trip to Earth.
That, obviously, means we’re going to want to land where the water is. On the Moon, this has meant focusing on the lunar poles, where deep craters create permanent shadows that can hold ice at temperatures where it’s stable. On Mars, things are considerably more complicated. So, in response to some NASA pilot funding, a team of scientists set up the SWIM projectM, for Subsurface Water Ice Mapping on Mars. The project has now published a progress report, and there is good news in the form of lots of ice deposits in areas we might want to land.
No poles, please
On the Moon, the temperature that dictates whether water ice is stable is set entirely by exposure to sunlight. As long as the Sun is never visible in a location, ice can survive. Mars is substantially more complicated, with an atmosphere that distributes heat and ensures that the temperature extremes are far more moderate, plus orbital wobbles that ensure seasonal changes in temperature.
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