The next time someone tells you Mars lacks water, show them this picture
Click for original image.
In the past decade orbital images from Mars have shown unequivocally that the Red Planet is not the dry desert imagined by sci-fi writers for many decades prior to the space age. Nor is it the dry desert that planetary scientists had first concluded based on the first few decades of planetary missions there.
No, what the orbiters Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Express have clearly shown is that, except for the planet’s equatorial regions below 30 degrees latitude, the Martian surface is almost entirely covered by water ice, though it is almost always buried by a thin layer of protective dust and debris. Getting to that ice will be somewhat trivial, however, as it is almost always near the surface.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a perfect example. It was taken on January 31, 2025 by the high resolution camera on MRO. At the top it shows part of a small glacial-filled crater surrounded by blobby ground clearly impregnated with ice. That crater in turn sits on the rim of a much larger very-eroded ancient 53-mile-wide crater whose floor, also filled with glacial debris, can be seen at the bottom of this picture. The wavy ridge line at the base of the rim appears to be a moraine formed by the ebb and flow of the glacial ice that fills this larger crater.
None of these glacial features is particularly unique on Mars. I have been documenting their presence now at Behind the Black for more than six years. Yet, I find still that most news organizations — including many in the space community — remain utterly unaware of these revelations. Any new NASA or university press release that mentions the near-surface ice that covers about two-thirds of the planet’s surface results in news stories claiming “Water has been found on Mars!”, as if this is a shocking new fact from a place where little water is found.
It is very shameful that so many reporters and news organizations are so far out of touch with the actual state of the research on Mars.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, deep within Mars’ southern cratered highlands. While numerous images of the Martian northern lowland plains, at similar latitudes, suggest the existence of a lot of ice impregnated near the surface, producing such blobby features almost everywhere, the evidence has been less obvious in the cratered highlands.
This picture demonstrates however that such near-surface ice exists in the south as well. Nor has it been the only such picture to do so. I have posted many in the past few years (see this series for just one example).
As I have been saying now for five years, Mars is not a dry desert like the Sahara, as we had believed based on past planetary missions. The missions of the past two decades have disproved this. Mars is a desert like Antarctica, with no liquid water anywhere but lots of frozen water, everywhere you look.
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The only way to get the press excited is to say “possibility of life” or even better “subsurface oceans perhaps teeming with life”.
It’s all about eyeballs.
Yes, Jerry, it is about “eyeballs.”
However, in a significant number of “circles” it is also about “refutation bias.” You know, a factual challenge to one or more beliefs that together, comprise a belief of far greater importance/significance.
In a general sense I term it “anathema bias,” as it represents a threat to all conformation biases.
Water? Yay! Life? Oh oh…. historically encounters with unknown viruses turns out badly
Just have Trump state that Mars is covered in ice and you watch how excited the press will be. I can hear the questions now:
What proof do you have?
Where did you get your degree in astrophysics with a minor in planetary geology?
Doesn’t the lack of liquid water on Mars demonstrate that we on earth have to double down on the green new deal to save our planet from turning into a ball of ice?
Why are you so interested in the geology of Mars, but make ignore how humans are destroying the earth?
Of course, if Biden commented about Mars – irrespective of what he said – the press would be issuing glowing comments about Biden’s perspicuity, intelligence and knowledge of all planetary phenomena.
One of the scientific principles rarely discussed is if the gravity of Mars can hold water on its surface. Will any water not frozen dissipate upwards and away from Mars? So if there was a time in the past when it was warmer, could liquid water have existed?
We see that on Earth which has a much higher physical mass and much stronger gravity that there is a fine line between surface water and evaporation.
Cool stuff. The closer we look, the wetter it gets. Develop a suitable power source and one-way trips are in the very near future. Cheers –
JerryR:
Mars has a surface gravity about 40% that of Earth. So it’s not that much less. It also receives about 40% of the sunlight that Earth does, so there’s not so much energy to drive water molecules to escape.
The big factory possibly allowing water to escape is the low atmospheric pressure (0.6% of Earth at sea level), so liquid water would more or less immediately boil. Once in gas form molecules could end up receiving enough energy to escape (the molecule can receive radiative energy from all around, while not having as much energy removed via collisions), though the average temperature (-60C) would make that process slower too.
The idea of “no water on Mars” appears to be an artifact of the Mariner 4 probe. Which did a flyby the year I was born. I’m old enough that I could have had grandchildren by now, and they’re still stuck in that mode.
Old joke: Do you think there life on Mars? I don’t know, I can’t see anyone by the swimming pool.
Glenn Reynolds has expressed hope that we DON’T find life on Mars. Once we do, it could put the kibosh on exploration and settlement, either from fear of disease, or fear of destroying the pristine species of another planet. Hard to argue, but it’s all moot once we do find life—IF we do.
“historically encounters with unknown viruses turns out badly…”
Historically, encounters with unknown viruses that have evolved to attack humans (or even just primates, mammals, or fellow sarcopterygian fish) turn out badly…
Disease-causing organisms (at least on Earth)—whether viral, bacterial, or eukaryotic—to be successful, are always evolutionarily closely attuned to their prey.
I admit, I have long shared Glenn Reynolds’ hope.
But I think the odds that Mars has, or ever had, life are becoming vanishingly small.