Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, that was a big \u2018wow\u2019 moment,\u201d Leshin told SPACE.com. \u201cI was really happy when we saw that there\u2019s easily accessible water here in the dirt beneath your feet. And it\u2019s probably true anywhere you go on Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curiosity touched down inside Mars\u2019 huge Gale Crater in August 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. It achieved that goal in March, when it found that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.<\/p>\n
But Curiosity did quite a bit of science work before getting to Yellowknife Bay. Leshin and her colleagues looked at the results of Curiosity\u2019s first extensive Mars soil analyses, which the 1-ton rover performed on dirt that it scooped up at a sandy site called Rocknest in November 2012.<\/p>\n
Using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, Curiosity heated this dirt to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit (835 degrees Celsius), and then identified the gases that boiled off. SAM saw significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds \u2014 and lots of water on Mars.<\/p>\n
SAM also determined that the soil water is rich in deuterium, a \u201cheavy\u201d isotope of hydrogen that contains one neutron and one proton (as opposed to \u201cnormal\u201d hydrogen atoms, which have no neutrons). The water in Mars\u2019 thin air sports a similar deuterium ratio, Leshin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tells us that the dirt is acting like a bit of a sponge and absorbing water from the atmosphere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n