{"id":6362,"date":"2024-06-03T23:47:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T23:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/?post_type=purduetoday&#038;p=6362"},"modified":"2025-07-30T13:34:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:34:40","slug":"what-lies-beneath-mars-subsurface-ice-could-be-a-key-to-sustaining-future-habitats-on-other-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/2024\/Q2\/what-lies-beneath-mars-subsurface-ice-could-be-a-key-to-sustaining-future-habitats-on-other-planets","title":{"rendered":"What lies beneath: Mars\u2019 subsurface ice could be a key to sustaining future habitats on other planets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.<\/strong> \u2014 To survive on other planets, water is, of course, critical. We need it to drink, sustain crops and even create rocket fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But on spaceflights, checked luggage is exorbitantly expensive. Anything heavy, especially liquids like water, is bulky and costly to haul by rocket, even to our closest interplanetary neighbors. The best plan, then, is to find water at the spacecraft\u2019s destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Purdue University planetary scientist Ali Bramson\u2019s research is laying the foundation for future extraterrestrial exploration. She is focused on finding ice deposits beneath the barren surfaces of the moon and Mars, providing a buried resource important for future human habitats and even space travel itself. Subsurface ice also is a compelling target for astrobiology, climatology and geology research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n    <div  class=\"purdue-home-quick-links-static \">\n        <div class=\"tagged-header-container\">\n\n            <h2 class=\"tagged-header\"><span>ADDITIONAL INFORMATION<\/span><\/h2>\n        \n        <\/div>\n\n       <ul class=\"quick-links-content\">\n                                        <li class=\"quick-link__item\">\n                                                                <a class=\"quick-link__link\"\n                                    href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/releases\/2023\/Q3\/science-enabling-heat-and-air-conditioning-for-long-term-space-habitats-is-almost-fully-available.html\" target=\"_blank\">\n                                    Science enabling heat and air conditioning for long-term space habitats is almost fully available                                <\/a>\n                            <\/li>\n                                                <li class=\"quick-link__item\">\n                                                                <a class=\"quick-link__link\"\n                                    href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/releases\/2024\/Q2\/discover-purdues-latest-and-greatest-in-space-sciences.html\" target=\"_blank\">\n                                    Discover Purdue\u2019s latest and greatest in space sciences                                <\/a>\n                            <\/li>\n                                                <li class=\"quick-link__item\">\n                                                                <a class=\"quick-link__link\"\n                                    href=\"https:\/\/engineering.purdue.edu\/ME\/News\/2024\/autonomous-grasping-robots-will-help-future-astronauts-maintain-space-habitats\" target=\"_blank\">\n                                    Autonomous grasping robots will help future astronauts maintain space habitats                                <\/a>\n                            <\/li>\n                            <\/ul>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson is continuing work that began with Mars through NASA\u2019s Subsurface Water Ice Mapping project. Radar analysis from spacecraft orbiting Mars probed beneath the planet\u2019s surface, looking for indicators of where&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/releases\/2021\/Q1\/ice-frozen-under-mars-surface-offers-major-resource-to-aid-future-settlements.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ice is likely located<\/a>&nbsp;across the planet. Data from spectrography and visual imagery also was utilized in the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe can see ice on the surface at Mars\u2019 poles, and we\u2019re beginning to understand how much is buried under the subsurface at lower latitudes as well,\u201d said Bramson, an assistant professor in the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eaps.purdue.edu\/index.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences<\/a>&nbsp;in Purdue University\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/science\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">College of Science<\/a>. \u201cBut we still don\u2019t have a good understanding of how much subsurface ice could be on the Earth\u2019s moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson\u2019s findings will offer early ideas about where future habitats on both the moon and Mars could be located, in terms of use by astronauts as well as travel capabilities; water can be used as part of the fuel for rockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mars has two large ice caps at its poles, which combined contain about the same amount of ice as Greenland. But winter at Mars\u2019 poles lasts several months without sunlight, making temperatures at the poles less than favorable. Areas with signs of widespread ice beneath the surface were found in the middle latitudes of Mars\u2019 northern hemisphere, making those areas more hospitable for future human habitats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson\u2019s work is already moving from examining radar findings provided by orbiting spacecraft to exploring the potential of mobile cartlike radar systems on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese systems can send radio waves into the ground and then listen for a signal to bounce off of materials in the subsurface,\u201d she said. \u201cThe systems can help us learn about what is in the subsurface without having to use destructive techniques to find it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Research plans in 2024 include testing different versions of the land-based radar systems in Iceland by searching for buried snow deposits covered by ash from volcanic eruptions. Additional testing at Purdue will evaluate the radar\u2019s capabilities to measure layers of ice and dust in simulated Martian conditions, using a walk-in freezer at negative 20 degrees Celsius (negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson will be presenting at two international conferences later this year about Mars\u2019 ice layers and how they form. She was also&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eaps.purdue.edu\/news\/articles\/2024\/0510-bramson-nasaaward.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">honored by NASA<\/a>&nbsp;recently as part of the Measurement Definition Team of the International Mars Ice Mapper mission concept, and was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalacademies.org\/our-work\/a-science-strategy-for-the-human-exploration-of-mars-panel-on-geosciences\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">selected by the National Academies of Sciences<\/a>&nbsp;to study the science that could be accomplished by astronauts on Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson\u2019s research is funded through NASA\u2019s Mars Data Analysis, Lunar Data Analysis and Solar System Workings programs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The potential for subsurface ice on the moon is seemingly low compared to other planets. Bramson said the current thinking is that there may be only 3% ice within and under the surface. That\u2019s compared to red-hot Mercury \u2014 the closest planet to the sun \u2014 where large ice deposits have been detected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEven though Mercury is so close to the sun that it\u2019s super, super hot, there are areas within craters near the poles that never see the direct sunlight because they\u2019re in permanent shadow, and that\u2019s cold enough to actually retain massive ice deposits,\u201d Bramson said. \u201cWe initially thought the moon would be similar, since it has similar permanently shadowed regions, but it seems like there\u2019s not these massive ice deposits like Mercury has.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bramson said the presence or lack of ice deposits on Mars and the moon raises a number of questions for her.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s really interesting from a science point of view to understand what are the conditions that led to ice being present in various locations on different planetary bodies,\u201d Bramson said. \u201cToday, some of these latitudes of Mars are too warm to form these ice deposits there. This ice, therefore, represents a record of the climate conditions on Mars in the past. Meanwhile, differences in the ice deposits on Mercury and the moon may tell us about different mechanisms that bring water to these objects in our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>About Purdue University<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue\u2019s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap \u2014 including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the new Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, and Purdue Computes \u2014 at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/president\/strategic-initiatives\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/president\/strategic-initiatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. \u2014 To survive on other planets, water is, of course, critical. We need it to drink, sustain crops and even create rocket fuel. But on spaceflights, checked luggage is exorbitantly expensive. Anything heavy, especially liquids like water,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316,7,524],"tags":[],"department":[32],"source":[35],"purdue_today_topic":[],"coauthors":[40],"class_list":["post-6362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prf","category-research-excellence","category-space","department-science","source-purdue-research-foundation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7613,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions\/7613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}