The Phoenix Lander has uncovered what it was sent to look for -- water ice! NASA's follow-up mission hopes to uncover a team of little green hockey players
Posted 06.20.2008 at 3:35 pm
22 Comments
The Dodo-Goldilocks trench dug by the Phoenix lander's robotic arm
NASA
NASA spent $420 million to send the Phoenix Lander to Mars last year. Festooned with state-of-the-art detection equipment, the rover's task was to scour the red surface in search of elusive Martian ice. And today, the NASA mission finally did uncover some extraterrestrial frost, and it did it with its simplest tool, a shovel.
The rover was digging a trench nicknamed Dodo-Goldilocks with its robotic arm when it hit some hard, refelective material. The scientists back on Earth who control Phoenix halted the digging, and spent the next couple of days taking photographs of the hole, trying to figure out what they were looking at in the ditch. Was the whitish material a kind of salt? But over those days of photography and scrutiny, something interesting happened to the marble-sized chunks. They evaporated. Long entombed beneath the iron-oxide surface of the red planet, the substance turns out to be part of a frozen layer of water just below the ground covered by Phoenix.
Any time water is discovered on other planets, the scientific community pays attention. Vital for life, the presence of any form of water immediately raises the chances that biological material might be present as well.
Currently, Mission Control is taking another look at a different trench, where the lander struck a hard layer at the same depth as the newly discovered ice. With any luck, that layer is composed of the same frozen treasure Phoenix unearthed today.
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Dispite the dangers involved in interplanetary flight. I wish I were young enough to be a part of the crew that will walk the surface of Mars for the first time.
I would give anything to be a little kid right now. This is such a great time to be young.
Soon enough, man will be walking on the first planet besides our own. Think about that for a second. We'll be multi-planetary, if only for a few weeks at a time.
It's really to bad that the earth is going to burn to death in 2012, or we might have a future on mars...
Well it's about time, wait....
They found ice with a shovel, when they've been spending years sending rovers there. Jeez, and people call me slow.
Well it's about time, wait....
They found ice with a shovel, when they've been spending years sending rovers there. Jeez, and people call me slow.
Well it's about time, wait....
They found ice with a shovel, when they've been spending years sending rovers there. Jeez, and people call me slow.
Well it's about time, wait....
They found ice with a shovel, when they've been spending years sending rovers there. Jeez, and people call me slow.
Well it's about time, wait....
They found ice with a shovel, when they've been spending years sending rovers there. Jeez, and people call me slow.
sorry my computer freaked out.
I don't see why scientists are living on the fact that aliens have to live with water. They are extraterrestrial you know.
Water has great ability to transfer materials through it, and therefore encourages movement of materials, that will create life.
look it up.
-Dexter-
Water is the source of life, essentially. The human body is made up of mostly H2O, as are almost all forms of life. If this weren't the case... we'd all pretty much be a pile of dust or a rock :P
I'm not very knowledgeable about this, but is it possible that this "ice" is dry ice? Frozen CO2? I seem to recall reading somewhere (I think it was wikipedia's article on how to terraform mars) that there was a lot of frozen CO2 at the poles...perhaps that is what this is? Becuase that too would sublimate, just as water would, which I think was their basis for identifying this "ice" as H20. Any thoughts?
the reason they are looking for the water is the fact that in the beginning on planet earth it was in the water that life started to evolve. So they believe there is a good chance something similar would happen on other planets.
Oh yeah and Kevin Balker explain yourself.
the.nerd.herd.group.googlepages.com
Now If we could just get MNDot up there to help them with there Ice problem.........
Mars may be alive right now, several days ago I showed on space.com message board that the Water ice was sublimating and told people how to verify it themselves, 2 days before NASA confirmed it. Three cheers for???
Now I have something that is even more extraordinary that is actively being discussed on several boards, an animation from the Phoenix Microscopic imager that shows something crawling around, what it is we don't know - ice-worm, nematode etc.
YouTube animation is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrY9OSSFRg
Board where this is being discussed:
http://www.space.com/common/community/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat:c7921f8b-94ec...
http://www.space.com/common/community/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3ac7921f8b-94...
from north vancouver, british columbia
ive been saying this since i was 8. im like why must they limit their searching, life on other planets is not based on the same restrictions as we are on earth, has anyone seen andromeda strain, the "disease" did not even have dna.
The C Cube your an idiot! what do think ETs drink! everything needs water to live! what do think aliens look like?
from Atlanta, Georgia
Shut up kokorokun.
And maybe that ice only is in a small area around the Phoenix Lander.
Kalvin Baker, why would the Earth end in 2012???
I believe the comment by "The C Cube" has it correct. Granted life forms as we know it need water to survive. However, by the very nature of calling something an alien life and finding water on other stellar objects doesn't necessarily mean that in itself makes it life supportable. Heck for all we know alien life could be in the form of intelligent energy forms or methane rather than water is basis for life. The scenarios of some thing other than water will be the alien life form survival property.
I forgot to add at the of "The scenarios of some thing other than water will be the alien life form survival property" are endless.