15 – The Frosty Plains of Utopia Planitia (feat. Cassie Stuurman)

Play Episode (32:12)

Some call water the “oil of the solar system” because of its importance in our eventual exploration of other planets. Finding new sources and learning about how to access it plays a key role in our future. Using the SHARAD instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Cassie Stuurman and a team at University of Texas at Austin discovered a massive deposit of ice in the northern plains of Utopia Planitia. Cassie joins us to tell the tale of its discovery, characterization and importance.

Links

• Cassie’s paper: “SHARAD detection and characterization of subsurface water ice deposits in Utopia Planitia, Mars”
• Cassie’s blog
• Cassie’s Twitter Account
• The SHARAD Instrument (courtesy of the Italian Space Agency)
• A SHARAD Radargram

WeMartians Theme Song is “RetroFuture” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/