Exposed Ice Crumbs Found By Mars Lander, NASA Believes

LOS ANGELES — Scientists believe 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, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said 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 on May 25. The $420 million mission is planned to last 90 days.

___

On the Net:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

Comments

[loki]

Mars has Ice in it ? Makes one wonder what Uranus has in it ?

[loki]

Are they sure its not the lid to an igloo cooler that was left behind by some campers?

Actually this is interesting. I wonder if some alien race built a machine that would super heat and melt the ice and cause an oxygen atmosphere , allowing humans from earth to breath and live on Mars? Now that would make a great story! Maybe they could make a movie about this too?

[bangthegong]

Good to know.

I'll be sure to bring along a larger quantity of ice-tea, on my next visit.

What a waste of time, money and thought.

[SonofLiberty1]

Continued:

Obama continues...

"The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with fighting the war in Iraq."

Ken Boyle continues that:

"The first years of an Obama administration would be particularly critical for NASA, because that's the time frame during which the shuttle fleet is due to retire. The schedule already calls for the space agency to hitch rides into orbit on other people's spaceships for up to four years, and if Obama follows through that gap could go for years longer - even assuming that Constellation goes into hurry-up mode if and when the budgetary spigots are opened wider."

USA Today quoted the Illinois senator as defending his plan to put NASA's vision on hold: "We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute," he said."

So, according to Obama, it sounds like he thinks that we can't train the astronauts to go to Mars and even if we can it doesn't matter anyway.

Of course this will make us vulnerable in that we "WILL BE RELYING ON OTHER NATIONS" to get us to the space station and back and that the technology and expertise that we gain is just not much to worry about.

Obama hails from Chicago a land captivate by bright city lights.

This is what light pollution does to a mind...makes it less creative:(

[SonofLiberty1]

apitalismisntamoral,

I concur:(

Of course this is coming from "The Obama Generation" who like their leader, Senator Obama believes in that shifting the money from the "Constellation Program" which is the Moon to Mars initiative would be delayed because:

"The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and the negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole. ..."

Which I read about in MSNBC's Alan Boyles "Cosmic Log"

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/26/481595.aspx

And here is the relevant paragraph of the speech

http://obama.3cdn.net/a8dfc36246b3dcc3cb_iem6bxpgh.pdf

that he gave in November of 2007:

"IX. A COMMITMENT TO FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
Barack Obama"s early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and the negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole. "

[imusintheevening]

On PBS and the SF Chronicle they claimed the water evaporated (liquid to vapor) at more than -100C, at least this article said vaporized to describe sublimation (solid to vapor).

[RebelPatriot]

Were there frost warnings today in Arizona?

[askmeificare]

They "believe" they found ice. Not confirmed.

[nastyvirus]

I can now confirm that ice was indeed found. Thank you.

[hypnus]

The Phoenix Lander will now extend it's blender arm and make a smoothie.

[Mort]

Surprise and excitement at finding ice? There's a flippin ice cap on Mars, for crying out loud!

[Vyvjala]

Actually, this is a picture of the inside of an American consumer's pocket after gas and eats............

[HumeSkeptic]

It seems NASA is under pressure to produce some "popular news" fast. This is not the way to do good science.

Take your time, folks, and tell us when you have some hard data.

[Phil123]

They must have global warming up there too. How else to explain the ice?
Maybe the Dems can figure out how to tax it.

[BongHitsForJesus]

.......And Phil123 offers us yet another example of why he is not a rocket scientist.

[imusintheevening]

It is your taxes that paid for the lander, now go drive down a road full of potholes and cheer for KBR not paying taxes on their US employees that were hired through a Cayman Islands shell Corporation!

[nastyvirus]

The levy on Martian ice, called the Martian Ice Vaporization Duty, is intended to pay for Phil123's diapers.

[loki]

Phill123 better hope Dems dont figure out how to people who mindlessly follow immoral unethical greed driven groups like the RNC.

[Spokane]

The robotic arm scooped up the Martian soil and put in on an analyzing tray. Then came the idea. Lets all look the other way for a couple of hours and if some of the soil happens to be blown off and disappears......we will say it must have been water! Do we all love it ? If so lets see a show of hands.

Mr. Fuji and Mr. Goldman why the long faces??

Do you want your kids in local schools and how bout that big ride you came to work in...........

[nastyvirus]

NASA calls this test the Martian Soil Fellatio Capacity Assay.

[mancityheel]

I'm going to blow up the Earth with my Acme G-47 Earth Disintegrator

[nastyvirus]

You're gonna need to plug in that Space Modulator, there.

I'll wait.