A New Graduate Project Plans to Make Martian Water Drinkable

Mars exploration technology has seen a lot of recent successes. MOXIE successfully made oxygen from the atmosphere, while Ingenuity soared above the red planet 72 times. However, to date, no one has ever achieved one thing that will be absolutely critical to any long-term presence on Mars - making drinkable water. There have been plenty of ideas on how to do that. Still, NASA recently started funding a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) graduate student named Lydia Ellen Tonani-Penha to look into the problem under their Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) funding program. Her Project Tethys will examine ways to purify the frozen or liquid brine that Mars is infused with.