The latest new images received Saturday (May 31) from the Phoenix lander now sitting comfortably near Mars’ equivalent of the North Pole has scientists excited. It appears from the images that the spacecraft’s thrusters may have uncovered a large patch of ice located just below the Martian surface.
It appears that the Phoenix is resting on and surrounded by several patches of ice which could contain the basic building blocks of life. These latest images show one of the landing pods sitting on a rough surface of dirt with a large patch of ice-like material about 1 meter in diameter sitting next to the pod.
Washington University scientist Ray Arvidson said in a press statement released on Saturday that the spacecraft’s thrusters may have blown away dirt covering the ice when the robot landed one week ago, which will be great for Phoenix’s digger which is designed to shovel as deep as 9 meters for soil and ice samples to analyze for minerals and concentrations of material necessary for life. It will be several more days, however, before the shovel will be put to work. And, it may be several weeks before results of findings can be known.
“We were worried that it may be 30, 40, 50 centimeters deep, which would be a lot of work. Now we are fairly certain that we can easily get down to the ice table,” said project chief Peter Smith a University of Arizona scientist.
In other NASA news, the Space Shuttle Discovery had a beautiful day yesterday for its successful launch carrying a $1 billion space lab from Japan. It will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday to begin attaching the newest arm of the station and to do some plumbing repairs on the only space toilet on the ISS. NASA has only 10 more Shuttle flights between now and 2010 to complete ISS building projects. In 2010 the Shuttle program will be decommissioned as NASA begins its next leg of exploration with manned missions to the Moon and later to Mars.
[Black & white NASA photo shows the Phoenix landing pod and exhaust from the lander’s descent engine unearthing either a patch of ice or a rock just beneath the Mars surface dirt.]
Someone please slap the scientist that said, “No, we don’t need to add wheels!” I mean come on, how much does a pair of lawn mower wheels cost? It doesn’t have to have powered wheels like a rover because the arm could drag the thing around! If they need to save money, tell them to go to any SciFi convention and ask, “Are there any volunteers here willing to fly a one-way mission to Mars?”