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NASA’s Rainbow Treasure Map Shows Water Ice on Mars

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This colorful map could help scientists select the best landing spots for future Mars missions. (Photo Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU)

NASA aims to send humans to Mars and a new map could help determine where future expeditions should land on the Red Planet.

A new paper, which was published in Geophysical Research Letters, details a map of water ice that’s believed to be an inch (2.5 centimeters) below the surface, according to NASA. Water ice is a key consideration for potential landing sites, because astronauts will need an adequate source for drinking water and creating rocket fuel.

This concept, which NASA calls “in situ resource utilization,” is important for determining human landing areas on the Red Planet. Satellites orbiting Mars could help scientists select the best places for building the first Martian research station. The authors of the paper used data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Mars Odyssey orbiter to find water ice that may be within reach of astronauts on Mars.

“You wouldn’t need a backhoe to dig up this ice. You could use a shovel,” said Sylvain Piqueux of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We’re continuing to collect data on buried ice on Mars, zeroing in on the best places for astronauts to land.”

Martian water ice is considered “treasure,” because it is underground throughout Mars’ mid-latitudes. These bizarre regions near the poles have been analyzed by NASA’s Phoenix lander, which scraped up ice, and the MRO, which has snapped many images of meteor impacts that have dug up this ice.

But where will astronauts excavate the ice? The paper proposes two heat-sensitive instruments: MRO’s Mars Climate Sounder and the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on Mars Odyssey to help locate good digging spots. Buried water ice alters the temperature of the Red Planet’s surface, and data from the study suggests that there’s water ice located throughout the Martian poles and mid-latitudes.

This map shows underground water ice on Mars. (Photo Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU)

This is where the rainbow-colored map comes into play: Scientists prefer Mars’ northern and southern mid-latitudes for astronaut landing sites, since they have a lot of sunlight and warmer temperatures.

A region called Arcadia Planitia, which is located in the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere, has been a potential landing target. The map above points out a lot of blue and purple hues in this region and they represent water ice less than one foot (30 centimeters) below the surface, while warm colors are over two feet (60 centimeters) deep. Black zones on the map show areas where a spacecraft would sink into the planet’s dust.

“The more we look for near-surface ice, the more we find,” said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL. “Observing Mars with multiple spacecraft over the course of years continues to provide us with new ways of discovering this ice.”

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