Abstract Ice-cemented regolith exists on Mars and could significantly influence surface mechanical behavior, affecting drilling, mobility, and sample acquisition strategies. For example, the China’s upcoming Tianwen-3 Mars mission aims to return Martian regolith samples, making an understanding of their geotechnical behavior critical, particularly for ice-cemented landing sites. This study develops the Tongji University Martian Regolith Simulant (TJ-MRS01) as a geotechnically representative engineering analogue. By systematically adjusting the particle size distribution and bulk density, the developed simulant achieves a bulk density of 1.60 g/cm 3 , an internal friction angle of 37.12°, and a cohesion of 1.17 kPa, aligning well with the geotechnical characteristics observed in situ. Subsequently, triaxial compression tests under subzero temperature were conducted to evaluate the mechanical strength of ice-cemented simulant samples with water contents of 5 wt.%, 10 wt.%, and 15 wt.%, respectively. The results show that the cohesion increases significantly, from 0.01 MPa to 0.7 MPa with increasing water content, while the internal friction angle increases slightly from 51.67° to 53.85°. This suggests that the cemented ice significantly strengthens the inter-particle bonding forces and modifies the shear failure mechanism. Under constant water content, increasing confining pressure leads to more pronounced radial deformation and enhanced dilatancy. In addition, the influence of particle size distribution and relative density on the mechanical strength was also examined. The investigation into the shear strength of ice-cemented regolith could support future engineering designs and mission planning in icy Martian environments. Graphical Abstract
Sanlang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.