If there's water on Mars, do you think that a manned Mars landing could happen sooner?

[_Augustus_]

Yeah, also do you think that the SLS will fly more often?

Post comments below.

Also, I'd like to point out that Curiosity is just a few miles from an area with liquid water. If NASA approves, it could investigate it by 2018.

Edited September 29, 2015 by _Augustus_

[Kibble]

Almost certainly not.

But could it inspire a new, soon unpiloted Mars lander to investigate, another Phoenix type?

[Findthepin1]

Nothing can land near the RSL. It's a potential Martian habitat and the treaty says we're not allowed to touch it.

[Kibble]

Nothing can land near the RSL. It's a potential Martian habitat and the treaty says we're not allowed to touch it.

Isn't like, the whole surface a potential Martian habitat?

[Darnok]

In most cases what NASA and other scientist from US says its dead end, waste of time, resources and human life. I only hope that Russia and China are not going to race at direction pointed by NASA, I hope they will pick their own direction

[vger]

I just hope NASA gets a bigger budget now.

This will probably be the most important thing we've done since Apollo.

I've been saying for a long time that something really groundbreaking needs to happen to get the whole country interested in space again. Something on the level of a moon landing, and another huge manned mission could be that. BUT, finding life on Mars would do that job just fine, and we don't need to send people there to do it.

Edited September 29, 2015 by vger

[Tristonwilson12]

Nothing will make a mars mission happen sooner

[peadar1987]

Nothing will make a mars mission happen sooner

Money.

[Budgie]

Almost certainly not.

But could it inspire a new, soon unpiloted Mars lander to investigate, another Phoenix type?

There's also the Mars 2020 rover, based on the Curiosity Chassis, sitting around. Not sure if its been funded yet, but I know its floating around

[SomeGuy12]

As I understand it, the only way water matters is it makes long term ISRU easier. That is, if you pay the enormous cost of sending some kind of mining equipment that can mine up the soil and then bake out the water, you would be able to collect, a drop at a time, water, which happens to contain the lightest element in the universe, hydrogen.

This lets you make rocket fuel - methane or liquid H2 - entirely from resources found on Mars itself. It lets you fill the water tanks of a habitat without having to bring that water all the way from Earth.

Or, you could just haul the lightest element, hydrogen, in tanks to Mars, and get the oxygen and carbon from Mar's atmosphere. For obvious engineering reasons, ISRU where you just have an air compressor and an air intake and a compact set of machinery sounds a heck of a lot more reliable and cheaper to develop than a set of mining equipment.

Also, that mining equipment may end up just requiring human hands to keep it running. Certainly, present day automation isn't up to the task.

[Lord Aurelius]

The discovery of liquid water won't necessarily make a manned mission happen sooner. The main hurdle in the way of a manned mission to Mars isn't really technological, it's much more of a political/financial issue. Right now there's no serious plans at all to send a manned mission there, just a lot of hypothetical mission plans.

That said, the presence of water will absolutely affect the planning of such a mission. Now that we know there's liquid water available near the equator, the mission can be planned around it and the technology developed to extract it. It will also further push the mission in favor of a semi-permanent colony instead of just flags and bootprints.

I do sincerely hope that all the positive PR Mars has gotten in the last decade from the rovers and orbiters, combined with this new discovery will be enough of a push to actually get serious planning and R&D started with a hard target date set for the mission soon after.

[PB666]

If there is water obtainable in a usable place, such as near the equator or at the center of a basin or within a meter of the surfacein a well lit basin, yes. Otherwise no, its just a robotic exploration target.