NASA scientists are pretty positive that the latest white stuff uncovered by the Phoenix Lander’s shovel is small bits of ice.
Small pieces of bright whitish material, which some thought could be salt, vanished, as if it had vaporized in the Martian atmosphere after being exposed to it by the shovel. The fact that it vaporized after being exposed discounts it as salt and nows leads NASA to believe they have at last ucovered ice on Mars.
“These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson stated. “There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”
The initial soil sample heated in the Lander’s onboard oven failed to yield evidence of water, but after the shovel hit a hard surface on Thursday, scientists are hopeful they have reached a thick icy surface that the Lander can begin analyzing.
The entire purpose of the $420 million Phoenix mission to Mars is to determine if there is water available that could sustain a prolonged visit to the planet by Earth astronauts. Any manned journey to the Red Planet would require an on-surface stay of at least a year, or possibly longer, thereby requiring the Mars team to find more water for drinking and growing greenhouses than could be carried from Earth for their stay.
The second purpose of the mission is to see if life once existed, still exists or could be transplanted in a sustainable form to the planet.
Talk about science-fiction becoming reality. Living for a year on Mars would be so cool and, until now, something that lived only on the pages and screens of science fiction writings.
This… is… AWESOME…
Where do I sign up? A Year on another planet…my sci-fi fantasy is almost reality…better yet, let some other geek test it, then I’ll go.
They better be careful… there might be aliens on mars… 🙂
If they’re Martians, then we are the aliens.
Doesn’t it seem like we’re going out of our way to *not* find evidence of life on Mars?
Ice forms larger crystals than the Martian dust and tends to make soil clump together; yet the lander uses a mesh to ensure only very fine grains reach the ovens, so…
The weeks the Rovers landed on Mars, Nth Montana temps were lower than where Opportunity was on Mars. Winter snow here is like dry sand – yet life finds its niche. Mars looks like it has those niches too; they’re just not on the plains of its North Pole.