Month: February 2021

Enlarge / While we know of locations with ice on Mars, not all of them are in places we'd want to land. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Over the past couple decades, plans to go to Mars or return to the Moon for longer stays have gradually moved away from sci-fi tinged "what if" scenarios and shifted to something that resembles actual planning. And those plans invariably include extracting water from local ice deposits. This water would help support any astronauts during their stay, cutting down on the weight we'd have to shift out of Earth orbit. But it could also be a source of hydrogen that helps power the astronaut's return trip to Earth.

That obviously means we want to land where the water is. On the Moon, this has meant focusing on the lunar poles, where deep craters create permanent shadows that can hold ice at temperatures where it's stable. On Mars, the situation is considerably more complicated. In response to some NASA pilot funding, a team of scientists set up the SWIM projectM, for Subsurface Water Ice Mapping on Mars, to analyze the data. The project has now published a progress report showing a lot of ice deposits in areas we might want to land.

No poles, please

Whether or not water ice is stable on the Moon is determined entirely by sunlight exposure. As long as the Sun is never visible in a location, ice can survive. Mars is substantially more complicated, with an atmosphere that distributes heat and makes the temperature extremes far more moderate, plus orbital wobbles that ensure seasonal changes in temperature.

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  Mazda has now brought its 250hp 2.5L turbocharged engine to the CX-30 crossover. [credit: Mazda ]

No car has surprised me more in recent years than the Mazda CX-30. It's the company's compact crossover, built on its new Skyactiv-Vehicle architecture, which it shares with the Mazda 3 sedan and hatchback. Like those models, the CX-30 is now available with Mazda's turbocharged 2.5L engine, giving the already-refined CUV the power it needs to compete for customers with the premium brands the Japanese automaker is beginning to target. Although, starting at $29,990, at a price that's still more Mazda than Mercedes-Benz.

Picking on crossovers is easy. Heck, I've done it more than once. But I have a confession to make: I'm starting to like some of them. As a now-firmly middle-aged person with the aches that entails, crossovers are easy to get into and out of than low-slung cars. The same goes for putting stuff in the back, and the higher hip point means a better view of the road ahead. What's more, they don't have to be boring choremobiles.

In the same way that the hot hatch evolved out of front-wheel-drive econoboxes in Europe in the 1970s, fun-to-drive crossovers are now a thing. Exhibits A, B, and C: the Porsche Macan GTS, Cayenne Coupe Turbo S E-Hybrid, and Aston Martin DBX. True, you'd expect those to be good, given how much they cost. But now we can add the CX-30 Turbo to that list—and for less than half the price of the Macan.