Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

An expeditionary crew on Mars sets up drilling gear in a quest to utilize ice for sustaining a human presence on the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA

If humans are to ever plant boot prints on Mars, where they need to go first is where the ice is.

One problem: Astronaut crews don’t have the luxury to ring down to the hotel front desk for that hospitality.

Work is on-going to tease out where and at what depth extractable ice exists on the Red Planet. Not only is ice a key ingredient for helping to sustain longer and longer human stays on that far-flung world, but ice is nice for science, as well as climate geology, including the search for life on Mars.

Noctis Landing site on Mars is an ostensibly flat transitional region between Noctis Labyrinthus and Valles Marineris proper.
Image credit: Pascal Lee

Please don’t cold shoulder my new Space.com story – “Mars ice deposits could pave the way for human exploration” – so go to:

https://www.space.com/mars-ice-deposits-astronaut-missions

China Mars finding

In a recent development, also go to this paper highlighting the work of China’s Zhurong Mars rover — “Modern water at low latitudes on Mars: Potential evidence from dune surfaces,” that states:

China’s Zhurong rover.
Credit: CNSA

“This discovery sheds light on more humid conditions of the modern Martian climate and provides critical clues to future exploration missions searching for signs of extant life, particularly at low latitudes with comparatively warmer, more amenable surface temperatures.”

Go to the paper here at:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add8868