There were a couple of surprises in the new analysis of the data.
There is little or no ice on the top 300 meters of the ground.
There is a weak and porous Mars. Well-cemented is not the case with the sediments. According to Vashan Wright of the University of California San Diego, there is no ice or ice filling the pores. The analysis was published in a journal.
There could be grains of ice or small balls of ice that are not cementing other minerals together. How likely is ice to be there?
There was a leading idea about what happened to the water on the red planet. It is possible that the red planet had oceans of water early on. Many experts thought that a lot of the water became part of the cement.
The water isn't a liquid if you put it in contact with rocks. Michael Manga said that it's part of the mineral structure. The rocks are not filled with cement.
Water may enter minerals that are not cement. One way to preserve a record of life or biological activity is lost because of the uncemented subsoil. The nature of cements protects them from erosion.
There is a scarcity of water in the 300 meters below the landing site. If it were possible to freeze water at the Mars equator, it would be because of the below- freezing average temperature.
Manga, a planetary scientist, has long suspected that the Martian surface would be covered in ice. Their suspicions have dissipated. There are large ice sheets and frozen ground ice at the Mars poles.
Scientists are now faced with the best data and observations. Manga is the chair of Earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley.
Elysium Planitia is a flat, smooth, plain near the Mars equator. The seismometer is used to measure the effects of earthquakes and meteorites.
There is a huge amount of knowledge about the surface that can be tied to this information. The data suggested that there could be lava flows. The team had to take into account uncertainties about the properties of the ground.
There are clues to the nature of the materials that are traveled through marsquakes. There are possible cementing minerals that affect seismic velocities. Rock physics computer modeling was used to interpret the InSight data.
"We ran our models 10,000 times to make sure the uncertainties were incorporated into our answers," said co-author Richard Kilburn. Simulations showing a mostly uncemented area fit the data.
If there is life on Mars, scientists want to investigate the underground. The life on the surface is protected from radiation. Mars Life Explorer is a NASA priority for the next ten years. The goal is to drill two meters into the Martian surface to look for life.
The proposed international robotic Mars Ice Mapper Mission is being considered by NASA as a way to identify potential science goals for the first human missions to Mars. Young scientists are prepared to contribute to such missions.
Jhardel Dasent is a graduate student in the lab led by Wright. I'm at a point in my life where I can contribute to the knowledge of another planet.
The National Science Foundation funded the research.
More information: Vashan Wright et al, A minimally cemented shallow crust beneath InSight, Geophysical Research Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1029/2022GL099250 Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters
All Rights Reserved © 2024
