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Scientists Find Significant Amounts of Water on Inner Planet

by admin December 18, 2021, 9:10 am 5.2k Views

In a truly unexpected discovery, European Space Agency astronomers are studying abnormal readings of hydrogen which could indicate an unheard of bounty that completely throws everything we know about the Red Planet Mars on its head. It started with studying the surface of Mars with a “finely tuned instrument” that detected hydrogen through neutron levels instead of light according to researchers. The results were startling, showing indications of “vast quantities of water”.

“We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected,” said Alexey Malakhov, a senior scientist at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences who co-authored a paper on the find, in a statement from the ESA. “This is very much like Earth’s permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures.”

The notion of a massive reserve within reach of the martian surface changes quite literally everything about a future manned mission and even the establishment of a manned presence on the surface. The H2O was discovered by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission that is in its first stages under the joint guidance of the ESA and Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency through a project called “ExoMars”. The orbiter, equipped with a “Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector or ‘FREND’ mapped the presence of concentrated hydrogen in Mars’ soil.

“It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutrons. And wet soil emits fewer neutrons than dry soil, which enables scientists to analyze and assess the water content of soil, hidden beneath its ancient surface.” Interesting Engineering explained.

“FREND revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water,” said Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science’s lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, in the ESA press release.

Breaking news: I've spotted hidden #water – either ice or water-rich minerals ???? – in #Mars’ Grand Canyon! ❄️????????

The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers ????

Read on: https://t.co/lIAEuz2tNW #ExploreFarther #ExoMars pic.twitter.com/j1jwSCJebq

— ExoMars orbiter (@ESA_TGO) December 15, 2021

Ice, Frost, Or Water? We Don’t Know Yet

Before this breakthrough probes had discovered small pockets of ice outside of the polar ice caps on Mars beneath the surface, but nothing substantial enough to support manned exploration at lower latitudes. All of that just changed.

“We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected,” said Alexey Malakhov, co-author of the study, in the ESA release. “This is very much like Earth’s permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures.”

According to The Daily News,

“The new research enabled scientists to look deeper than they have in the past, getting below the surface dust, which reveals just small amounts of water, according to Space.com. It helped them find “water-rich ‘oases’ that couldn’t be detected with previous instruments,” said another co-author, Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

This potentially water-rich area is about the size of the Netherlands, the ESA said.

“Assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water,” Mitrofanov said in the statement.”

With a shallow sub-surface H2O supply in reach, mankind’s habitation of our sister-world now seems inevitable.

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