NASA Lays Out ‘Treasure Map’ for Vital Water Ice Retrieval on Upcoming Manned Mars Mission
by Sputniknews.com
In preparation for NASA’s long-awaited human mission to the Red Planet, experts are now zeroing in on the operation’s most desirable landing area to ensure astronauts will be able to harvest ice necessary for everything from drinking water to rocket fuel.
Even though NASA’s Artemis III mission is set to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, complete with new, more flexible spacesuits, researchers also have their eyes on another monumental operation: a human Mars mission.
However, in order to carry out this mission, astronauts will have to perform “in situ resource utilization” and collect water ice found within Martian polar caps. In other words, once they leave Earth, they’re on their own in terms of survival.
“You wouldn’t need a backhoe to dig up this ice. You could use a shovel,” Sylvain Piqueux of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said, as quoted by NASA. “We’re continuing to collect data on buried ice on Mars, zeroing in on the best places for astronauts to land.”
According to the release, entitled “NASA’s Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars,” researchers using data from the administration’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey orbiter are considering the northern and southern mid-latitudes, ”which have more plentiful sunlight and warmer temperatures than the poles.”
Out of the available areas, scientists are leaning heavily towards the northern hemisphere’s Arcadia Planitia – a region which Piqueux plans to survey with a comprehensive campaign throughout the Red Planet’s seasons.
“The more we look for near-surface ice, the more we find,” said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA’s JPL. “Observing Mars with multiple spacecraft over the course of years continues to provide us with new ways of discovering this ice.”
NASA’s December 10 release noted that the administration has been indepthly exploring the usability of ice on Mars since NASA’s Phoenix lander retrieved samples of the substance from the planet over a decade ago.
“It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance,” Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said during a June 2008 news briefing on the lander’s findings.
Aside from the basics of drinking water and jet fuel, humans are going to have to get creative and go 6 feet under or more if they want to survive on Mars, according to a September Daily Express interview with NASA astronaut and physiologist Dr. James Pawelczyk.
“Survival on Mars really means going underground. So possibly identifying lava tubes of creating our own thick-walled structures but using the Martian surface,” he asserted.
Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.
She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.
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I suggested underground habitats several years ago…provides shielding from radiation ..send a boring machine..also why go to Mars without testing the technology on the Moon first?..The solid-fuel rocket program is a cover…we have super-cavitating EM ships..they can travel through time if you are not careful (Philadelphia experiment)..Let the Annunaki terraform Mars…they are the ones who broke it..trying to kill Alalu..read a book people..Ha!
Doesn’t sound like much of a plan. Just watched the film, “The Martian”, with Matt Damon, where an astronaut gets left behind on Mars, and has to survive by his own resources for over a year before rescue. Of course, the film completely neglects how NASA manages to have two pickup truck-sized martian rovers, and a human habitat that looked to be a thousand square feet on the surface, beforehand, not to mention the quarter mile in length orbiter. Details!
Growing potatoes looks great in the movie. Unfortunately, it appears there are heavy chemicals in the soil that would poison the spuds. The first crops to be grown in that soil will have to be nothing but oxygen producing grasses that will wick up the heavy minerals. Then they must be discarded. Once a few cycles have taken place the soil is then clean enough to grow food. A long process, but doable. A quarter mile long orbiter? Where did he get that from? The rovers are considerably smaller than a pickup truck.
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