Ice Exposed in New Craters
A study reported in the journal Science in September 2009, shows that some newly formed craters have excavated clean, water ice from just below the surface in five locations on Mars. After a short time, the ice disappears, subliming into the atmosphere. The ice is only a few feet deep. The ice was confirmed with the Compact Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The ice was found in a total of 5 locations. One of the locations (Site 5) is in the Diacria quadrangle at about 46° N, 182° E (Arcadia Planitia). This discovery is significant because it shows the presence of subsurface ice at latitudes further south than expected and proves that future colonists on Mars will be able to obtain water from a wide variety of locations. The ice can be dug up, melted, and then taken apart to provide fresh oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel. Hydrogen is the powerful fuel used by the space shuttle main engines
Read more about this topic: Diacria Quadrangle
Famous quotes containing the words ice, exposed and/or craters:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Sixties, of course, was the worst time in the world to try and bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on.”
—Nancy Reagan (b. 1923)
“Listen.
We must all stop dying in the little ways,
in the craters of hate,
in the potholes of indifference....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)