Things are expected to dig deep on Mars. Progress is evident in how to better extract subsurface ice to create drinking water, rocket fuel and other useful resources on the Red Planet.
But top down is boring tuesday Reaching available ice reservoirs is no slam dunk.
It is up to the company to meet that challenge Honeybee RoboticsIt calls its approach the RedWater concept.
Related: Martian ice deposits pave the way for human exploration
Dual purposes
„Redwater has proven to be the perfect architecture for deep drilling on Mars,” said Chris Jacqueney, vice president of exploration technology group at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California.
Jackney said Redwater could be drilled for dual purposes, scientific exploration and water mining. „It's a win-win. We're in a position to inject this technology [the] missions next Tuesday,” he told Space.com.
Recent revelations about surface water ice on the Red Planet tie in nicely with Red Water.
Glacier ice
Over the years, data collected by Mars orbiters has revealed that about one-third of the Martian surface consists of ice near the surface, as well as ice buried deeper.
For example, earlier this year, observations by the European Space Agency Mars Express The study suggested that in some places on the planet, layers of water ice extend several miles below the ground.
Adds this month's report to the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on Mars. A never-before-seen volcano.
New research infers that near-surface preserved glacial ice lies beneath an even more eroded feature in the relatively warm equatorial region on Mars.
Related: Searching for Water on Mars (Photos)
End-to-end testing
Meanwhile, Honeybee technicians recently completed end-to-end testing of the Redwater system in the company's cold room, said company systems engineer Joey Palmowski.
That work was made possible through a NASA Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) grant, Palmowski told Space.com.
The RedWater system uses two proven terrestrial technologies, both in Greenland and already in operation to support polar operations. Antarctica. They are spiral tubes that separate from the surface into underlying ice, and are known as the Rodriguez Well or „Radwell” concept.
A rodwell is a method of drilling a well in subsurface ice and injecting liquid water to the surface.
To cut to the chase: Water ice has been detected and mapped in the mid-latitudes of Mars in the form of debris-covered glaciers or sheets of ice hundreds of meters thick. It is an auspicious place for the future Human Travel Outpost.
Swimming team
Nathaniel Putzik is associate director and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute's office in Lakewood, Colorado.
As co-leader of the Subsurface Water Ice Mapping (SWIM) program at the Mars Project Group, Budzig and colleagues are busy charting the location and depth of mid-latitude ice on Mars.
They have now completed the third phase of the SWIM work, which is apparently aimed at helping establish target priorities for the International Martian Ice Mapper (I-MIM) program.
Snow Scout
A radar-carrying orbiter, I-MIM is a NASA project planned by the Italian space agency Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).Jaxa), and this Canadian Space Agency An ice scout to make Mars orbit.
A major goal of I-MIM is to characterize the volume and extent of water ice in the mid- and low-latitude regions of the planet.
Putzik said he felt NASA and other international partners were interested in pursuing this I-MIM mission.
Still, there's significant budget uncertainty surrounding the effort, Budzik noted, certainly on NASA's side and perhaps on other agencies.
„This makes it difficult for international partners to finalize their contracts and actively design and develop mission hardware and instruments,” Budzig noted.
Required: Lateral and vertical data
There are uncertainties in today's datasets, Budzik said, so more research on Mars and especially new orbital radar sounding capabilities are needed.
Once in hand, that information could definitively identify and characterize buried ice in lander measurements for wide areas across the mid-latitudes of Mars, Budzig added.
„That means in principle one could send lander expeditions to higher latitudes or places where new impacts have exposed ice and confirm that ice is encountered on land using a drill without first getting additional data,” Budzig said. „However, even for such locations, the lateral and vertical extent and concentration of ice will be poorly constrained without new instruments.”
Hard facts
Even drilling through 1 meter (3.3 feet) of ice would be difficult, explained Isaac Smith, associate professor at York University in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.
Such drilling into the earth requires a lot of heat or electricity and a lot of manpower. „It's very difficult when the ice is much colder than minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit), like all the ice on Mars,” Smith said.
NASA was found to be the same Phoenix Mars Lander mission in 2008, Smith said. The legged stationary rover touched down on the planet further north than any previous mission, at a latitude roughly equivalent to the latitude of northern Alaska, then scooped up Martian soil — and checked for water ice.
“That snow is cement soil [at the Phoenix lander locale] „Digging is very difficult, but anyone who lives in Canada in the winter knows not to dig in the backyard when the ground is frozen,” Smith pointed out.
Frozen in time
Smith said that careful sampling of Martian ice would have scientific benefits.
„Polar ice can give you a detailed record of climate history; mid-latitude ice will become a resource for future space exploration and the next frontier for exploration. Life on Mars,” Smith instructed. „Like that Obtaining rock samples While ice can provide clues to the early history of Mars, the ice can give us clues to the recent history of Mars.”
All good news, but reaching depths of tens of meters or more is a big task, Smith said. Doing so is very dynamic, he said, and even requires human intervention Earth.
„For the foreseeable future, this will have to be done by robots on Mars, probably for a long time, which will require additional strength, which adds cost, and some power sources we don't have yet,” Smith said. „It's possible in the long run, and Honeybee Robotics could be the company to make it happen.”
„Oddany rozwiązywacz problemów. Przyjazny hipsterom praktykant bekonu. Miłośnik kawy. Nieuleczalny introwertyk. Student.