Ore resources on Mars

When magma sits in underground chambers, slowly cooling over thousands of years, heavier elements sink.

Some examples include niobium, a metal used in producing superconductors and specialty steels, lanthanum and neodymium, and europium for television monitors and energy-efficient LED light bulbs.

[7] After the mass of magma has cooled and has mostly frozen or crystallized into a solid, a small amount of liquid rock remains.

Some of the world's most significant deposits of gold, silver, lead, mercury, zinc, and tungsten started out this way.

[10][11][12] Nearly all the mines in the northern Black Hills of South Dakota came to be because of hot water deposits of minerals.

[14] Research carried out at Louisiana State University found different types of volcanic materials around volcanoes in Elysium Mons.

There is strong evidence for much more widespread sources of heat in the form of dikes, which indicate that magma traveled under the ground.

One would expect dikes and other igneous intrusions on Mars because geologists believe that the amount of liquid rock that moved under the ground is more than what we see on the top in the form of volcanoes and lava flows.

[22] On Earth, vast volcanic landscapes are called large igneous provinces (LIPs); such places are sources of nickel, copper, titanium, iron, platinum, palladium, and chromium.

[4] During that time, ice in the ground will melt, heat, dissolve minerals, then deposit them in cracks or faults that were produced with the impact.

[28] Areas of aqueous and low-grade thermal alteration have been found by the Opportunity Rover on the rim of Endeavour crater.

[29] These are found near joints and fractures that allowed deep fluid circulation which caused chemical and thermal alteration of the rocks.

Using instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter they found the minerals Smectite, Silica, Zeolite, Serpentine, Carbonate, and Chlorite that are common in impact-induced hydrothermal systems on Earth.

[38][39][40] The surface of Mars contains abundant evidence of a wetter climate in the past along with ice frozen in the ground today; therefore it is quite possible that hydrothermal systems could be set up from impact heat.

NASA's Mars Odyssey actually measured the distribution of ice from orbit with a gamma ray spectrometer.

Research, published in February 2011, detailed the discovery of clay minerals, serpentine, and carbonate in the veins of a Nakhlite martian meteorite.

[44][45] Because 30% of the roughly 180 impact craters on Earth contain minerals or oil and gas, it seems that the cratering promotes the development of natural resources [46] Some of the ores produced from impact-related effects on Earth include ores of iron, uranium, gold, copper, and nickel.

In addition, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, niobium, molybdenum, lanthanum, europium, tungsten, and gold have been found in trace amounts.

Later, flying uncrewed craft with gravity and magnetic measuring devices will be able to determine the exact locations of mineral deposits.