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The Subsurface Water Ice Mapping (SWIM) project, funded by NASA, has released its fourth map pinpointing potential subsurface water ice locations on Mars.

Facts About:

The Subsurface Water Ice Mapping (SWIM) project goal is to find the best locations to access water ice buried beneath the Mars' surface.

Recently, they released their fourth set of maps, which are the most detailed and accurate maps so far since the project began in 2017.

This project is led by the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

• They gather data from various NASA missions like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the 2001 Mars Odyssey, and the now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor.

To create these maps, SWIM utilized two high-resolution cameras on the MRO.

• They used Context Camera data to make better maps of the Northern Hemisphere.
• For the first time, they used HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) data to get the closest, most detailed view of the ice's edge near the equator.

The SWIM project was done in two phases.

• The first phase, finished in 2019, focused on the northern hemisphere, and
• The second phase, completed in 2020, included the southern hemisphere.

One exciting thing about the new map is that it shows 'polygon terrain,' where the ice beneath the surface causes the ground to crack into polygonal shapes.

• This suggests there's more ice hidden below.