If we want pure hydrogen and oxygen, the best source is water and the biggest water-source here is the ocean - as well as the best bulk transport-medium. But the ocean is salty, so has to be desalinated. Desalination is also a project and it's doing great. But why even do that much? Plus we have saltwater at Mars, Ceres, Europa, and wherever humans go potty. Hydrogen and oxygen needs cheaper whence is less fresh water.
As occasionally noted here "salt" needn't just be sodium. Mars' most-salient saline is magnesium perchlorate.
India Times reports on their boy Vijay Ramani, at Washington University - the one in Senloo. NASA are about to test a "MOXIE" system to get oxygen (only) from Mars' atmo; Ramani thinks he can do 25 times better, from Mars' Mg(ClO4)2-salty lakes ices, as well as the hydrogen. DOI 10.1073/pnas.2008613117.
I expect diminishing-returns. Absent the hydrogen and oxygen we'd end up not with pure salt but with (even) saltier water - brine, so called. That is good too! For instance magnesium - yeah, we got that in our own seas too.
WHERE IS IT? 12/11 - Vincent Chevrier points out, it's Schiaparelli's canali all over again. First we must find these posited brines. On Mars they're uncommon. Isidis Planitia and Chryse Planitia most likely, followed by the great northern depression around 45 latitude and Hellas in the south. Maybe for half the day. And we might have to roof 'em. But yes, magnesium-chlorine compounds especially perchlorate are implicated. Calcium too.
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