How to Mine Water on Mars

Pockets of water ice on the southern pole of Mars, such as these, have been stopped from their once-routine migration by a cap of dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide. 

Planetary scientists think the migrations was fueled by an eccentric wobble in Mars'tilt. 

Credit: ESA

The bone-dry desert of present-day Mars may seem like the last place you would look for water, but the Red Planet actually contains a wealth of water locked up in ice.

Evidence that Mars once supported liquid water has been mounting for years, and exploratory missions have found that water ice still exists on the planet's poles and just beneath its dusty surface.

Accessing that water could require digging it up and baking it in an oven, or beaming microwaves at the soil and extracting the water vapor.

Yet no mission has attempted to extract water on Mars or any celestial body beyond Earth in appreciable quantities.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander inserted the four needles of its thermal and conductivity probe into Martian soil during the 98th Martian day, or sol, of the mission and left it in place until Sol 99 (Sept. 4, 2008). 

The Robotic Arm Camera on Phoenix took this image on the morning of Sol 99 while the probe's needles were in the ground. The science team informally named this soil target "Gandalf."

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck InstituteView full size image

Now, the Netherlands-based organization Mars One, which wants to establish a permanent human settlement on the Red Planet, is planning to send an unmanned lander to Mars in 2018 that would carry an experiment to demonstrate that water extraction is possible. Mined water could be used for drinking, growing plants or creating fuel.

"Here on Earth, we've experimented with different technologies to extract moisture out of the atmosphere or soil," said Ed Sedivy, civil space chief engineer at the security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin and program manager for NASA's Phoenix lander flight system.

The question is, Sedivy said, "At the concentration of water we're likely to encounter and the temperatures we're likely to encounter [on Mars], how do we validate those technologies are appropriate?"

ESA - Light and dark in the Phoenix Lake

Phoenicis Lacus has an area of 8100 sq km (59.5 x 136 km), which corresponds to the size of Corsica.

This image was obtained on 31 July 2010 using the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover but, with planets, first impressions do count. New images show where complex fault lines in Mars’ Phoenicis Lacus region have resulted in terrain with a distinctly contrasting appearance.

Nineteenth-century astronomers were the first to see Phoenicis Lacus on Mars. They identified it as a dark spot, and thought that it resembled a sea.

Now we know that it is not a body of water but the southwestern extension of the complex Noctis Labyrinthus system, which stretches away from the giant volcanoes of Mars’s Tharsis region.

The brightness of a surface feature is still the first thing planetary astronomers notice. It is known as the albedo and is partly determined by the composition of the surface material.

For example, ice is more reflective than rock. The texture of the surface also plays a part, with rough surfaces reflecting less sunlight and so appearing darker than smooth surfaces. 

On 31 July 2010 the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the ESA spacecraft Mars Express obtained images of Phoenicis Lacus at approximately 13°S/249°E. 

The data were acquired during orbit 8417 with a ground resolution of approximately 17 m per pixel.

Credits: NASA MGS MOLA Science Team

Phoenicis Lacus was formed by the uplift of the Tharsis volcanic plateau. 

The continual episodes of strong volcanic activity in Tharsis not only lifted the plateau, but also deformed Phoenicis Lacus, creating uplifted blocks and multiple fault lines at different orientations.

A prominent collapse feature in Phoenicis Lacus sinks to a depth of about 3 km below the surrounding terrain. 

This image was created using a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) obtained from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. 

Elevation data from the DTM are colour-coded: purple indicates the lowest-lying regions, and grey the highest elevations. The scale is in metres.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

ESA Portal - Light and dark in the Phoenix Lake - images

NASA: Phoenix Mars Lander crushed by ice

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander's solar panels.

"The Phoenix spacecraft succeeded in its investigations and exceeded its planned lifetime," said Fuk Li, manager of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Although its work is finished, analysis of information from Phoenix's science activities will continue for some time to come." Phoenix has returned a wealth of data for astrobiologists studying the potential for past or present life on Mars.

Last week, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter flew over the Phoenix landing site 61 times during a final attempt to communicate with the lander. No transmission from the lander was detected. Phoenix also did not communicate during 150 flights in three earlier listening campaigns this year.