Drilling for water ice on Mars: How close are we to making it happen?

[Judi Lynn]

By Leonard David published 9 hours ago

"Just as getting rock samples can provide clues to Mars' early history, ice will give us clues to Mars' recent history."



Drilling down deep for ice on Mars via RedWater technology. (Image credit: Honeybee Robotics)

Things are looking up for digging deep on Mars. Progress is palpable on how best to extract subsurface ice to generate drinkable water, rocket fuel and other useful resources on the Red Planet.

But boring down from the topside of Mars to reach available icy reservoirs is no slam dunk. Tackling that challenge is the company Honeybee Robotics, which calls its approach the RedWater concept.

Drilling down deep for ice on Mars via RedWater technology. (Image credit: Honeybee Robotics)

"RedWater has proven to be the right architecture for deep drilling on Mars," said Kris Zacny, vice president of the exploration technology group at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California.

More:
https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-drill-honeybee-robotics

[Warpy]

1. and just how hostile is the chemistry likely to be?

There is a lot of nasty, toxic stuff in Martian dust. Putting humans on that planet is going to be a very bad idea until we know a lot more about it and how to protect humans against it.

Water might be there, but it's going to be full of stuff we're not evolved to tolerate.