Also on 30-September, Jeff brought up the recent findings made by the Mars rover Curiosity and its mission regarding the discovery of significant quantities of water in the Martian soil. These findings indicate that the soil consists of up to 2% water, which works out to roughly a quart of water in each cubic foot of soil. This would make the extraction of enough water to meet the needs of future Martian explorers possible, providing a huge advantage over shipping enough water from Earth to meet those needs.
Interestingly, the water contained in the Martian soil is rich in deuterium, a so-called "heavy" hydrogen isotope with an extra neutron in its nucleus as compared to protium, the predominant isotope. The percentage of deuterium in the soil is roughly the same as the percentage of deuterium in the Martian atmosphere, implying that the soil is absorbing the water directly from the air.
One source among many: a space.com article.
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