Yesterday, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Trace Gas Orbiter detected the presence of large amounts of hydrogen in the central area of the Grand Canyon of Mars Mariner.
If all this hydrogen were in the form of water molecules, it would mean that as much as 40% of the near-surface material in the region would be water!
The ESA's official of the mission tweeted that "the reservoir is very large, the underground is not too deep, and it is easy to be used by future explorers", so netizens have @ Musk, so that he can set off for Mars!
Whether it's a picture circulating on the Internet or a picture of Mars sent back by a Mars rover, we can see an extremely desolate Martian world, just like the desert of Earth, which can easily give us a feeling that Mars is an extremely water-scarce world.
However, this may not be the case, there is much more water on Mars than we think, and it is certainly not the problem of water that is blocking Musk's expedition to Mars.
Mars - The scarred landscape below is Sailor Valley
Why is it so important for Mars to have water?
On Earth, where there is almost water, there is life, and whether the water is piping hot or cold, there will always be creatures that can thrive in it.
Ever since people observed Mars with telescopes, they have thought that Mars is a world full of water! The place where a lot of water was found this time is the Largest Canyon in the Solar System, spanning a quarter of Mars, and on Earth with a telescope you have the opportunity to see this canyon, which in the past was thought to be the canal of Mars.
In 1965, Mankind's first Mars rover, Mariner 4, was launched, and after that, many spacecraft were sent to Mars, some of which flew over Mars to take a few photos, some of which entered the orbit of Mars, and then ran around the orbit of Mars, and some landed from Mars.
Note: The martian world under the lens of the probe
However, from the information gathered by these probes, the Martian environment is not optimistic at all, it is a cold, desolate, thin air place that we Earthlings can never breathe.
But such a desolate world is the planet in the vast universe that is most likely to become our second home, and one of the most likely to have extraterrestrial life.
But it's all based on whether Mars contains enough water!
Therefore, the exploration of Martian water has always been one of the main contents of most Mars missions, and one of the main tasks of Tianwen-1 is also to explore the water of Mars, so we still have a good understanding of how much water Mars is.
Pictured: Korolev Ice Pit, containing 2200km^3 ice
How much water does Mars have?
Due to the cold, the water of Mars basically exists in the form of ice!
In the age of telescopes, it has been observed that Mars has a polar ice sheet like Earth.
Since the beginning of the space age in the 1960s, mars rovers have collected images showing the geological features of Mars, some of which have also been shown to have previously been glaciers there.
Over the past 10 years, data from ground-penetrating radars and other orbiters has been a direct demonstration of the existence of water ice in much of the area beneath the Surface of Mars.
So how much water ice is there?
Note: Cobblestones washed out by water on Mars
Widely accepted data suggest that the currently proven water ice on the surface of Mars alone or deeper surfaces has more than 5 million cubic kilometers, enough to cover the entire Mars at a depth of 35 meters if it all melts away.
However, this is only part of the surface of Mars, and is more likely to be underground, because water ice cannot last long if it is exposed to the surface of Mars today.
Although Mars is far from the sun, in the summer at low latitudes, the temperature can reach about 27 degrees Celsius.
At the same time, due to the extremely low atmospheric pressure, as soon as the temperature of Mars begins to rise, the surface water ice will immediately sublimate - directly from the solid state to the gas without melting, and the water that enters the Martian atmosphere is easy to escape, rather than turning into rain and returning to the earth as on Earth.
However, like Earth, the rotation of Mars also has a certain tilt, so the lower the temperature is the further you go to the poles, the easier it is for water ice to be preserved for a long time.
Note: Map of water ice levels at high latitudes on Mars
In fact, most of the water ice that has been discovered on Mars is in the polar direction of 60° north and south latitude – almost any of these areas have water ice concentrations of more than 20%, and polar water ice concentrations of 100%.
At latitudes below 60°, the water ice on the ground becomes fragmented, with basic concentrations not exceeding 10% of the area.
Note: Water map of low latitudes of Mars
It's clear that finding water ice at the lower latitudes of Mars is not an easy task, or it's hard to find water.
The Grand Canyon of Mariner is in the equatorial regions of Mars, and if the concentration of water ice in these areas is really more than 40%, it really means a lot.
Because the lower latitudes are more suitable as a settlement for human landing in the future, after all, not many people like to live in the icy Arctic Circle.
While water isn't a problem for Mars, it's too early for Musk to pack up and fly to the site, because colonizing Mars isn't a problem with water on Mars at all.
So far, we haven't even taken back samples of martian land, and all the Mars rovers have bought one-way tickets, let alone manned past.
At last
I don't know if you have ever thought that most of the lower latitudes now have no water ice, so how did the previous ice reach the lower latitudes?
In other words, why is there a lot of water ice in the Grand Canyon of The Mariner?
Mainstream science now holds that water ice at lower latitudes on Mars is a relic of Mars' last ice age.
Mars' axis of rotation changes periodically relative to the Sun's tilt, and when the tilt increases to 40° or more (currently 25°, up to 80°), the polar regions warm and snow will accumulate near the equator.