If until now there were many companies that ventured to reveal when they could put a human being on Mars, despite the fact that they had to face many other issues such as finding some way for it to survive on the planet, it seems that to the root of the discovery just made by a group of researchers from NASA, the entire trip planning could undergo quite significant modifications.
Before even continuing to reveal to you that in NASA, as it has been revealed, nothing less than the location of up to eight regions of Mars where is it located large cross sections of pure ice. Undoubtedly a more than interesting milestone that, on the other hand, will give many wings to all those people who are dedicated to seeing conspiracies where surely there are none.
Far from all this controversy that will surely be generated in different media, the truth is that the news is not that there may be ice on Mars, something that many researchers took for granted. The most interesting part of this is when NASA tells us about the existence of the so-called as'pure ice', that is to say, water with mineral properties.
Responsible for this discovery has been the HiRISE technology equipped in the chamber of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Based on the statements and the statement published by NASA itself, it seems that the person responsible for this discovery has been the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter thanks to your camera HiRISE And it has not been until a part of the surface of Mars has been eroded in the mid-high latitudes, between 55 and 60 degrees both north and south of the planet, the same area where temperatures are usually extremely low, until these great reserves of pure ice have been discovered.
As a detail, tell you that the HiRISE o High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, is a camera built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp in collaboration with the lunar and planetary department of the University of Arizona. Basically we are talking about a telescope of about 65 kilograms of weight whose development has cost about 40 million dollars and that allows to photograph with a resolution above 0 meters allowing scientists to differentiate objects 1 meter in diameter.
Thanks precisely to this technology, HiRISE has literally been cataloged as the largest camera that works on an interplanetary mission, it has been possible to discover these ice deposits on Mars that, according to NASA calculations, have a depth of approximately one meter in its narrowest parts up to 100 meters in the widest areas. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to estimate the amount of ice that exists on the planet, although it is believed that this amount may be much more extensive than what is seen in the images.
We will still have to wait many years to find out if this water can be consumed by humans
For NASA, a new door is now opening for the exploration of Mars and there are many voices that, after this discovery, hope that a mission will be created that is capable of extracting a sample of this ice for further study. This implies, as sure you are thinking, that NASA must find a way to send a Rover to this region, something that can be quite complicated since all the missions, so far, have landed in the area 'warmer'of the planet, that is, at about 30 degrees the equator.
As you can see, there is still a lot of research ahead since now not only other data must be known such as its depth or state, but also properties such as its level of purity, the minerals it contains and, above all, if it can be consumed by humans. Hopefully, in future missions to Mars, carried out by both NASA and other agencies, a Rover can be sent to this area of the planet and unravel all these unknowns.