Curiosity Finds Water On Mars

Water, Water everywhere and not a drop to drink.  NASA announced today that the Curiosity rover discovered water on Mars.

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, charged with answering the question: "Could Mars have once harbored life?" To do that, Curiosity is the first rover on Mars to carry equipment for gathering and processing samples of rock and soil. One of those instruments was employed in the current research: the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which includes a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer. These tools enable SAM to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements.

"One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Laurie Leshin, lead author of one paper and dean of the School Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically."

This find is significant in that future explorers to Mars will not have to carry large amounts of water with them. Astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints of water out of every cubic foot of Martian dirt they dig up. The average person needs to consume 2 liters of water per day to survive or 730 liters per year.  Given that 1 liter of water weighs about 2.2 pounds (On earth at least).  So that works out to about 1,606 lbs of water per person for a one year stay on the red planet.  Given the often cited cost of $10,000 per lb for launch costs, it will take about $16 million per astronaut just to launch one year's worth of drinking water.  And you thought that bottle of perrier was expensive.  If we then extrapolate that cost to a crew of 4 and add in additional water for bathing, cleaning and crops, the cost of water shipment probably approaches $0.5 Billion.

Finding relatively accessible water on Mars is a game changer.  Astronauts can now ship a water separator to Mars and mine all of the water that they need.  Cheers!