York University
Preparing for Mars Ice Mapper Mission with Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar, Modeling, and Ground Truth — NASA has stated the goal of sending humans to the Martian surface by the mid-2030s, and so reconnaissance of potential landing zones needs to be complete before a first landing site can be chosen. Water ice is the most important in situ resource utilization (ISRU) for humans, even above building materials because it can be melted and cleaned to be used as drinking water and rocket fuel. As such, sending humans to locations with abundant and accessible water will enable crewed missions earlier, for lower cost, and with less risk than if the vehicles had to carry enough water to support a full length mission and a return trip.
The goal of the International Mars Ice Mapper (I-MIM) mission is to quantify the presence, depth to, distribution, and purity of water ice in reconnaissance zones that are favorable for future human exploration and colonization.

The purpose of this project is to quantify the performance of L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and sounder in terrestrial analogue s