Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Illustration of the scientific payloads mounted on Zhurong rover. The group picture of the rover (left) and the lander (right) was taken by the WiFi camera (Image Credit: the ChinaNational Space Administration (CNSA)). NaTeCam: Navigation and Terrain camera. RoMAG: Mars Rover Magnetometer. MSCam: Multispectral Camera. MSC-1: MarsClimate Station (Wind field and sound probe). MSC-2: Mars Climate Station (Air
temperature and pressure probe). MarSCoDe: Mars Surface Component Detector. RoPeR(CH1): Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (channel 1). RoPeR (CH2): Mars Rover
Penetrating Radar (channel 2).
Credit: Steve Yang Liu, et al.

China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, landed in southern Utopia Planitia. The mission’s lander deployed the Zhurong rover following a soft landing on the Red Planet on May 14, 2021.

Zhurong was outfitted with a Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (RoPeR). Output from the ground penetrating gear indicates that a model incorporating dirty ice mixed with stones aligns most closely with RoPeR observations.

China’s Zhurong rover.
Credit: CNSA

That data reveals the presence of shallow subsurface ice, a roughly 23-foot (7 meters) thick layer of low-loss material sandwiched by two high-loss layers.

Analysis of the data is consistent with water ice, suggesting its possible presence at a depth of approximately 50 feet (15 meters), representing a large reservoir of buried volatile deposits in the planet’s past or even present today.

Topography around the Zhurong Rover, as observed by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL/U of A

The research work is led by Xindong Meng of the State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences at Macau University of Science and Technology in Macau, China.

The Zhurong rover covered nearly 1.2 miles (2,000 meters) over 325 martian days before entering a dormant stage. Water ice is frequently found at middle and high latitudes on Mars, but its depth in low latitudes has remained unresolved. The China rover appears to have changed that situation.

China’s Zhurong rover wheels to the south, clearly shown in this image acquired by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Southern Utopia Planitia is a region that shows geological evidence of an active hydrological past, “making it an ideal site for the search for subsurface water ice,” Xindong and team members explain.

“The presence of a shallow subsurface ice-bearing layer at low-to-mid latitudes would represent a valuable and readily accessible resource for future human exploration,” they report in the journal, Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

To access the paper – “Evidence of shallow subsurface ice at Tianwen-1 landing site” – go to:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X26000154?via%3Dihub