Accessing water on Mars: Examining the best technologies for future missions

A new study has examined how future human missions to Mars could access one of the planet’s most vital resources—water. The “Martian aqua: occurrence of water and appraisal of acquisition technologies” paper, published in the Advances in Space Research journal, presents a comparative analysis of potential water acquisition technologies for use on the red planet. It also evaluates the feasibility of extracting water from various Martian sources, including underground ice, soil moisture, and atmospheric vapor—building on the findings of earlier studies which identified the sources.