Planetary Science Institute
Planetary Science Institute is a research center that is part of the pulse of the water sector. Here we bring together everything it publishes on Smart Water Magazine: its news, its blogs and the events it takes part in.
Water may have flowed intermittently in Martian valleys for hundreds of millions of years
Using impact craters as a dating tool, Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Alexander Morgan has determined maximum timescales for the formation of Martian valley networks shaped by running water. "Mars today is a global desert, but its surface preserves extensive evidence of past flowing water, including what appear to be river valleys. The timescale over which […]
Layering history shows how water and carbon dioxide have moved across Mars
Mars’ south polar layered deposits of H2O and CO2 ice record its climate history. A new study links the long-term global movement of Mars’ water from midlatitude to pole to a function of the planet’s orbital configuration with H2O ice deposition decreasing as a factor of obliquity, or spin-axis tilt. “No deposit yet analyzed provides a […]
A long history of flowing water recorded in clay-bearing sediments on Mars
A region on Mars may have been repeatedly habitable until relatively late in Martian history, says a new paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Catherine Weitz. Some of the most extensively preserved landforms on Mars created by running water on its surface are found within the Margaritifer Terra region where deposits of clay-bearing sediments have been identified. "The presence […]
Climate change and melting glaciers have widely varied impacts on asian water supplies
Climate change is causing mountain snow to melt more rapidly and glaciers to shrink, but this is making a widely varied impact on water supplies in Asia, a new paper by PSI Senior Scientist Jeffrey Kargel says. These effects are altering the water supplies of more than 1 billion people who depend on rivers that […]
SWIM Project Maps Potential Sources of Mars Water
Missions carrying humans to Mars will require on-site resources, and a project led by Planetary Science Institute (PSI) scientists Nathaniel Putzig and Gareth Morgan is mapping the availability of potential shallow water-ice sources across the surface of the Red Planet. Two teams led by Putzig and Morgan were contracted by NASA to pursue separate mapping […]