The drinkable rock: improvised methods to extract H20 from minerals for resource depleted emergencies on future Mars missions

Abstract

Once inhabited, medical emergencies will occur on Mars where human survival will depend ultimately on the availability of water. This research aimed to explore the hypothesis that medical crews working in an austere and extreme environments could extract mineral bound water through improvised methods using only items accessible to the crew from the habitat. During a Mars simulation crew members collected surface gypsum, a hydrate mineral, and attempted three improvised methods to extract the mineral bound water through a heating, disaggregation and distillation process. The methods produced differing results however the total extracted mass of water as a percentage of the total sample mass varied from 0.39% to 7.4%. By utilizing items found in the habitat only; the crew were able, through improvised strategies, to achieve a proof of concept by extracting water from minerals during the simulated mission.