Some two pints of liquid water can be found in each cubic foot of Martian soil

Sep 27, 2013 20:11 GMT  ·  By
Mars' soil contains a significant amount of water, the Curiosity rover finds
   Mars' soil contains a significant amount of water, the Curiosity rover finds

This past Thursday, NASA published a paper detailing the discovery of water on the surface of the Red Planet. Specifically, the water was pinned down in soil samples collected and analyzed by the Curiosity rover.

Based on data collected by the rover, scientists estimate that each cubic foot (0.03 cubic meter) of Martian soil contains roughly two pints (1 liter) of liquid water.

“One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil. About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically,” Laurie Leshin with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute says.

“We tend to think of Mars as this dry place – to find water fairly easy to get out of the soil at the surface was exciting to me. If you took about a cubic foot of the dirt and heated it up, you'd get a couple of pints of water out of that – a couple of water bottles' worth that you would take to the gym,” the researcher further details, as cited by RT.

Writing in the journal Science, scientists explain that, in order to make head and tail of the chemical makeup of Mars' soil, the Curiosity rover scooped dust, dirt and soil samples and fed them into an instrument dubbed SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars).

While inside SAM, the samples were heated to 835 degrees Celsius (1,535 degrees Fahrenheit). This made it possible for scientists to pin down both traces of water and several other chemical compounds.

“We heat [the soil] up to 835C and drive off all the volatiles and measure them. We have a very sensitive way to sniff those and we can detect the water and other things that are released,” Laurie Leshin explains.

Besides water, the soil samples whose makeup the Curiosity rover got the chance to closely examine were found to contain carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds, EurekAlert tells us.

“Mars has kind of a global layer, a layer of surface soil that has been mixed and distributed by frequent dust storms. So a scoop of this stuff is basically a microscopic Mars rock collection. If you mix many grains of it together, you probably have an accurate picture of typical Martian crust.”

“By learning about it in any one place, you're learning about the entire planet,” Laurie Leshin comments on the importance of these findings.