UH Researchers Part of International Research Team That Discovers Water on Mars

By Kristen Cabral
External Affairs and University Relations

Jeffrey Taylor, planetary scientist with UH Manoa’s Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) and director of Hawai‘i Space Grant College, and incoming Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert are members of an international research team that recently announced their discovery of water on Mars using instruments on NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Their findings were reported in the May 31 issue of Science.

Taylor and Englert are part of a 20-scientist team—which includes members from educational and research institutes in the United States, Germany, Russia and France—that has a gamma ray spectrometer on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

Scientists used Odyssey’s gamma ray spectrometer instrument suite to detect hydrogen, which indicated the presence of water ice in the upper meter (three feet) of soil in a large region surrounding the planet’s south pole. The gamma ray spectrometer suite is unique in that it senses the composition below the surface to a depth as great as one meter. By combining the different type of data from the instrument, the team has concluded the hydrogen is not distributed uniformly over the upper meter but is much more concentrated in a lower layer beneath the top-most surface.

“The amount of water is surprisingly large, even in the upper meter,” Taylor says. It indicates that there is a chance that life evolved on Mars. But the excitement goes beyond that as the presence of water “tells us about the potential for future life because it provides an essential resource for humans living on Mars,” says Taylor. “This discovery may be an important step in the human settlement of Mars.”

The astonishing discovery lies in the amount of ice. “It is really dirty ice, not dirt with some patches of ice,” Taylor says. If the water has been deposited by vapor exchange with the atmosphere, it holds clues to Martian climate. It may allow scientists to understand the atmospheric water cycle on Mars and perhaps even the history of the climate. “This is just the beginning of a great science story,” Taylor says.

Understanding the climate history of Mars and the details of the deposition of ice in the upper meter will require more observations from Odyssey and future missions, but scientists do know something very important right now: Ice is very close to the surface in some places on Mars. This has enormous implications for human exploration and settlement of the planet. Although water can be extracted from hydrated minerals anywhere on Mars, it is much easier and cheaper to dig up some dirty ice, melt it, filter it and use it. Water is essential for human life, for use in agriculture, and for converting into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. There is a vast supply of water for use by Martian settlers, sitting within a meter of the surface.

Scientists have suspected for some time that large amounts of water previously existed near the surface of Mars, but have been researching to answer the question of where the water went. The discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey team help to solve a portion of this puzzle.

Mars Odyssey is an orbiter carrying science experiments designed to make global observations of Mars to improve understanding of the planet’s climate and geologic history, including the search for water and evidence of life-sustaining environments. The data will help scientists understand the origin of Mars, how its crust formed and evolved, and how materials were eroded and deposited, possibly in ancient lakes or seas. Odyssey was launched on April 7, 2001, and reached Mars on October 24, 2001. The primary science mission will continue through August 2004.

For more information log on to the “Dirty Ice on Mars” article on the Planetary Science Research Discoveries Web site.

Contributing to this story were Tara Hicks, Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and Jeffrey Taylor, Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and Hawai‘i Space Grant College.