Supercooling and Ice Formation of Perchlorate Brines under Mars-relevant Conditions

Abstract:

Perchlorate salts, discovered in the Martian regolith at multiple landing sites, may provide pathways for liquid water stability on current Mars. It has previously been assumed that if perchlorate brines form in the Martian regolith via melting or deliquescence, they would be present only briefly because efflorescence into a crystal or freezing to ice would soon occur. Here, we used a Raman microscope to study the temperature and relative humidity (RH) conditions at which magnesium perchlorate brine will form ice. Although ice is thermodynamically predicted to form whenever the saturation with respect to ice (S_ice) is greater than or equal to 1, ice formation by perchlorate brines did not occur until elevated S_ice values were reached: S_ice= 1.17, 1.29, and 1.25 at temperatures of 218 K, 230.5 K, and 244 K, respectively. If a magnesium perchlorate particle was allowed to deliquesce completely prior to experiencing ice supersaturation, the extent of supercooling was increased even further. These high supersaturation values imply perchlorate brines can exist over a wider range of conditions than previously believed. From these experiments it has been found that magnesium perchlorate exhibits supercooling well into the previous theoretical ice region of the stability diagram and that liquid brines on Mars could potentially exist for up to two additional hours per sol. This supercooling of magnesium perchlorate will help with the exploration of Mars by the Mars 2020 spacecraft by helping to understand the phase and duration of water existing in the Martian subsurface.