Mars lander finds bits of ice, scientists say

[GrnMarvl14]

Source.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Scientists believe that NASA's Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission's principal investigator said Thursday.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in a statement.

"These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice," Smith said.

"There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

Phoenix Mars is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable.

The probe is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples, and scientists hope it will find frozen water.

However, an initial soil sample heated in a science instrument failed to yield evidence of water.

The bright material was seen in the bottom of a trench dubbed Dodo-Goldilocks that Phoenix enlarged on June 15.

Several of the bright crumbs were gone when the spacecraft looked into the trench again early Thursday, NASA said.

Phoenix's arm, meanwhile, encountered a hard surface while digging another trench Thursday and scientists were hopeful of uncovering an icy layer, the space agency said. That trench is called Snow White 2.

The arm went into a "holding position" after three attempts to dig further, which is expected when it the reaches a hard surface, NASA said.

Scientists have been using names from fairy tales and mythology to designate geologic features around Phoenix and the trenches it has been digging.

In 2002, the orbiting Mars Odyssey detected hints of a vast store of ice below the surface of Mars' polar regions. The arctic terrain where Phoenix touched down has polygon shapes in the ground similar to those found in Earth's permafrost regions. The patterns on Earth are caused by seasonal expansion and shrinking of underground ice.

Engineers also have prepared a software patch to send up to Phoenix to fix a problem that surfaced Tuesday in the use of its flash memory.

NASA said that because Phoenix generated a large amount of duplicative file-maintenance data that day, the mission team has been avoiding storing science data in the flash memory and is instead transmitting it to Earth at the end of each day.

"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole May 25. The $420 million mission is planned to last 90 days.

So...we have underground ice. Now...to find life.

 

[Every Breaking Wave]

Finding the ice, while a bit expected, is definitely good news. Lets hope organic compounds can be found next.

 

[Barb]

Now all we need is for the Mars lander to find some good scotch.

 

[Ugozima]

Now all we need is for the Mars lander to find some good scotch.

Lol.






Water on Mars! Whoopie! There might be bacterium (besides those we found....)!

 

[Every Breaking Wave]

A new revelation that has left some "flabbergasted".

Mars soil good enough to grow asparagus

Martian dirt is apparently good enough for asparagus to grow in, NASA scientists said Thursday, as they announced the results of a soil analysis collected by the US Phoenix Mars lander.

"There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact it seems very friendly," said Samuel Kounaves, the project's lead chemist at the University of Arizona in a telephone press conference.

"The soil you have there is the type of soil you have in your backyard," said Kounaves. "You may be able to grow asparagus very well."

The analysis is based on a cubic centimeter of soil scooped up by the lander's robotic arm and introduced into one of its eight ovens, where it was gradually heated up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Kounaves said his team was "flabbergasted" at the results that came back.

"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements of the nutrients to support life, past, present or future," said Kounaves.

Scientists found elements in the soil that included magnesium, potassium and sodium. "There are probably other mineral species, we are still working on data," he said.

Kounaves said the analysis results are "one more piece of evidence that there were liquid water action at some point in the history of Mars."

"It's very similar to the soil analysis results we got from some dried places on Earth -- this is the very exciting part," Kounaves said.

The sample is from the surface soil that scientists say covers a layer of ice.

On June 20 NASA scientists announced that the Phoenix Mars lander confirmed a long-held belief that ice is hiding under the surface in the Red Planet's northern region.

The lander's robotic arm started digging trenches into Martian soil after touching down near the planet's north pole on May 25, revealing a white substance that scientists had said was ice.

"The specific data coming out of instrument has just been spectacular," said William Boynton from the University of Arizona, the lead Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) scientist.

Scientists found no ice in the sample -- not surprising, Boyton said, because it was a surface sample and had been sitting on the TEGA oven for several days, during which time any ice would have evaporated.

Boyton said that scientists had detected small amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the surface of the soil particles. This carbon dioxide was released at low temperature in the furnace, while at higher temperatures, the TEGA oven detected a "modest" amount of vapor.

"What we can say now is that the soil clearly has interacted with water in the past, but we don't know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern region or if it might have happen elsewhere" and the soil blown over to the site where the Phoenix landed.

NASA scientists said they will analyze ice fragments in the TEGA oven over the next weeks.

If the ice contains impurities the results could speak volumes of the climate history in that area of the Red Planet.

Mars is currently too cold for water to flow, but it is possible that in a distant past the polar regions saw higher temperatures, according to the scientists.

Phoenix's mission is to search for water and organic components to see if a primitive form of life was possible on Mars.

The Phoenix probe does not have the instrument necessary to detect micro-organisms.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

There was also a recent revelation that the reason Mars is so different between its northern and southern hemispheres is very likely due to an enormous asteroid impact some 4 billions of years ago. While the atmosphere may not be perfect for harboring life now...who knows what it could have been like pre-impact?

Honestly, the more information that comes out about Mars, the more staunchly I believe that life once existed there. Not microscopic life, but...something visible to the naked eye. Certainly an impact big enough to leave visible scares 4 billion years later along an entire hemisphere could easily kill off any life. No proof of any real life, of course...but it's fun to imagine.