New orbital radar data confirms large ice deposits in Phelgra Mountains near Starship landing zone
A new paper published this week used the SHARAD radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to confirm that the glacial features found everywhere within the Phlegra Mountains where one of Starship’s four prime landing sites is located contains significant quantities of very accessible pure water ice.
The red dots on the map to the right mark two of those prime landing sites, with one inside the Phelgra Mountains in a region directly studied by this paper. The numbered black dots were other images taken by MRO for SpaceX, reported here in 2020. From the paper’s abstract:
We examined mid-latitude landforms on Mars that resemble Earth’s debris-covered glaciers in a region called Phlegra Montes. Our study site is a 1,400-km-long mountain range in the northern hemisphere of Mars that houses numerous debris-covered glaciers also called Viscous Flow Features (VFFs). Using data from the SHallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, we detected eight new glaciers and estimated the thickness and volume of ice within them as well as the thickness of the debris on top insulating the ice. Our findings suggest that the region holds around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of ice below the surface. We detected two notable types of glaciers for the first time on Mars using SHARAD: (a) a glacier system with terrace-like steps and (b) a perched “hanging” glacier on the eastern side of the mountains
The study also found that the layer of dust and debris that covers these glaciers and protects them from sublimating away ranges from 6 to 25 feet in thickness, well within reach of any future colonists.
This study only confirms what all the orbital data for the past two decades has suggested, that Mars is an icy world like Antarctica, not a dry desert like the Sahara. As the researchers themselves note in the very first line of their paper, “Mars is a frozen world where water ice is abundant above, at, and under the surface.”
Their research also confirms that SpaceX has made a good choice for its Starship prime landing sites. Though it will likely not make its first landing at site #3, because it is inside the mountains and thus more risky, expect a landing there not long thereafter.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A new paper published this week used the SHARAD radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to confirm that the glacial features found everywhere within the Phlegra Mountains where one of Starship’s four prime landing sites is located contains significant quantities of very accessible pure water ice.
The red dots on the map to the right mark two of those prime landing sites, with one inside the Phelgra Mountains in a region directly studied by this paper. The numbered black dots were other images taken by MRO for SpaceX, reported here in 2020. From the paper’s abstract:
We examined mid-latitude landforms on Mars that resemble Earth’s debris-covered glaciers in a region called Phlegra Montes. Our study site is a 1,400-km-long mountain range in the northern hemisphere of Mars that houses numerous debris-covered glaciers also called Viscous Flow Features (VFFs). Using data from the SHallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, we detected eight new glaciers and estimated the thickness and volume of ice within them as well as the thickness of the debris on top insulating the ice. Our findings suggest that the region holds around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of ice below the surface. We detected two notable types of glaciers for the first time on Mars using SHARAD: (a) a glacier system with terrace-like steps and (b) a perched “hanging” glacier on the eastern side of the mountains
The study also found that the layer of dust and debris that covers these glaciers and protects them from sublimating away ranges from 6 to 25 feet in thickness, well within reach of any future colonists.
This study only confirms what all the orbital data for the past two decades has suggested, that Mars is an icy world like Antarctica, not a dry desert like the Sahara. As the researchers themselves note in the very first line of their paper, “Mars is a frozen world where water ice is abundant above, at, and under the surface.”
Their research also confirms that SpaceX has made a good choice for its Starship prime landing sites. Though it will likely not make its first landing at site #3, because it is inside the mountains and thus more risky, expect a landing there not long thereafter.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
All is proceeding as Robert Zubrin has foreseen.
The smaller Lunar Starship?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up9D6GXQhQQ
going to need a lot of water to wash off the perchlorates
maybe we should build a practice colony in the actual Antarctica?
send the Optimus bots to make it livable first, generate interest with funny robot hijinks video
anyways let’s hope we’re shipping fusion generators to Mars in five years
Calvin Dodge,
Not exactly. Zubrin spent so much time figuring out how to get to Mars at miniscule scale on the cheap using repurposed legacy hardware that he fell into the trap of regarding that as the ‘right’ way to do things. He seems resentful, now, that Elon – who will most likely be the world’s first trillionaire by the time the first human expedition to Mars departs LEO – is going to be able to go to Mars at scale with bespoke gear.
Jeff Wright,
The proprietor of that channel has a tendency to get too far out over his skis on a regular basis. SpaceX has already bent metal for the upper third of the first HLS Starship so I don’t see any sawed-off version being a way to save time at this point. What would most consequentially speed up the Artemis 3 schedule is for SpaceX to build a Starship-based replacement for SLS-Orion and launch the crew on that. It, and the HLS Starship could refill from separate depot ships in LEO, then head Moonward together, docking on the way and eliminating any otherwise required waiting around in lunar orbit, as would need to be done for Orion, and also allowing their separation and reconnection to take place in a much lower lunar orbit.
TallDave,
Yeah, I suspect going in and out of Martian hab airlocks is likely to resemble walking through a car wash. The habs will definitely need mud rooms.
There’s not really anyplace on Earth that is a reasonable facsimile of Mars. A number of “Mars analog” hab projects have been done, but I don’t think any have been worth much in terms of lessons learned.
The SpaceX plan seems very much to be to send a bunch of Optimus bots on the first expedition. They won’t be able to make Mars “livable,” exactly, but they can certainly do a lot of useful prep work prior to later arrival of humans.
Fusion generators, fission reactors, windmills, solar arrays – preferably all of the above.
Dick Eagleson wrote, “There’s not really anyplace on Earth that is a reasonable facsimile of Mars.”
Actually, I think Antarctica and the Arctic archipelago are very reasonable facsimiles of Mars. They are very cold, very dry (except for tons of ice). The gravity and atmosphere are different of course, but that can’t be helped.
In fact, I’ve noted this before, but the research stations in Antarctica have provided a lot of lessons that can be applied to Mars.
At the same time, I agree that a lot of money and effort has been wasted on “hab projects” where people make believe they are living in a Mars habitat for months. This work has uses, but usually its value has been greatly overstated.
Robert Zimmerman,
To the extent Antarctic research stations have any relevance to Mars settlement it’s mostly in the psychological dynamic of the participants. The people in Antarctica are there to do real work that has some consequence – at least to the researchers. What they’re doing is real to them. And they are not able to leave at a moment’s notice. Both will also be true in spades of early Mars settlers.
I think it is not so true of those “Mars hab” simulation projects that are basically exercises in LARPing for participants. At some level, they know it’s all fake and that they can pull the “emergency stop” any time they want to.
Dick Eagleson: Anent using Antarctica vs the fake “Mars Lab” simulations, we agree completely.