Often seen as a red barren wasteland harboring little value (outside its orbit near the asteroid belt), Mars may have at least one resource underneath its soil that may be of some use to future colonists.
(New Scientist Space) FUTURE colonisers [sic] of Mars needn’t worry about lugging materials from Earth to build their bases – the most widely used building material on Earth, steel, could be manufactured on the Red Planet.
The rover Opportunity has found elemental iron – a key ingredient of steel – peppered across the Martian surface as a result of collisions with iron-rich meteorites. The dry conditions and lack of atmospheric oxygen mean that the stuff has not rusted, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Hopefully scientists will be able to confirm how much iron is within the soil, as that would enable colonists to construct large cities on that crimson world.
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