Planet Mars 2019

There are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and Rosalind Franklin rovers. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% of the Earth’s, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. The volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 meters (36 ft). In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.


Dr. Jason Soderblom said in a September 10, 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press Release that the evolution of lunar porosity can provide scientists with valuable clues to some of the most ancient life-supporting processes occurring in our Solar System. Dr. Soderblom is a planetary research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Astronomers are still debating Titan's origin. However, its intriguing atmosphere does provide a hint. Several instruments aboard the Huygens spacecraft measured the isotopes nitrogen-14 and nitrogen-15 in Titan's atmosphere. The instruments revealed that Titan's nitrogen isotope ratio most closely resembles that seen in comets that exist in the remote Oort Cloud--which is a sphere composed of hundreds of billions of icy comet nuclei that circle our Star at the amazing distance of between 5,000 and 100,000 AU. This shell of icy objects extends half way to the nearest star beyond our own Sun. "Everything indicates that the hydrogen originates in the moon's rocky core. We considered various ways hydrogen could leach from the rock and found that the most plausible source is ongoing hydrothermal reactions of rock containing minerals and organic materials," Dr. Waite noted in the April 13, 2017 SwRI Press Release.