Mars lander finds bits of ice!!!

[DesiBaba]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- 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.


Trenches excavated by the lander's robotic arm have turned up white material mixed in with the reddish dirt.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/TECH/space/06/20/phoenix.mars.ap/art.mars.whitesoil.ap.jpg

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." Watch CNN's Miles O'Brien explain the find »

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/06/20/phoenix.mars.ap/index.html

[max de Indiana]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- 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.


Trenches excavated by the lander's robotic arm have turned up white material mixed in with the reddish dirt.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/TECH/space/06/20/phoenix.mars.ap/art.mars.whitesoil.ap.jpg

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." Watch CNN's Miles O'Brien explain the find »

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/06/20/phoenix.mars.ap/index.html

Great:up:
atleast peoples can now dream to live on Mars:D




Humans could be living on Mars by 2021 (http://www.northernlife.ca/News/LocalNews/2006/06-07-06-moon.asp?NLStory=06-07-06-moon):p

[tantric_yogi]

Clumps of ice disappearing in few days and yet no evidence of water!!!

:D ;)


copy/paste

"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." Watch CNN's Miles O'Brien explain the find »

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

[King]

Tell me if there is Oil on Mars .. that's what is more interesting right now :)

[DesiBaba]

i am confused :confused: theres ice, but no water? aaaing?! aisan kaisan? ice melts to form water right? :D

freakin confused

[echarcha]

Now all the UFO buffs will crawl out of the woodwork :D

And hey, ice is of no use.. Is there oil or fossil fuel of any kind?;)

[max de Indiana]

Tell me if there is Oil on Mars .. that's what is more interesting right now :)
water is more imp thn oil bro, :D

bio-fuel(oil) tau kheti-badi karke apun log paida karlenge...
par paani ke bagair na tau kheti-badi hogi..na hi apun log jinda rah paayenge.:D

DB..may in that particular area on mars , water is frozen due to low temp...like we have on arctic:D

[max de Indiana]

Now all the UFO buffs will crawl out of the woodwork :D

And hey, ice is of no use.. Is there oil or fossil fuel of any kind?;)

there shd be enf Uranium and Plutonium..
thats what we need:D

[max de Indiana]

intresting article abt mars
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/images/mars-sea2.jpg


Why Explore Mars?

After Earth, Mars is the planet with the most hospitable climate in the solar system. So hospitable that it may once have harbored primitive, bacteria-like life. Outflow channels and other geologic features provide ample evidence that billions of years ago liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars. Although liquid water may still exist deep below the surface of Mars, currently the temperature is too low and the atmosphere too thin for liquid water to exist at the surface.

What caused the change in Mars' climate? Were the conditions necessary for life to originate ever present on Mars? Could there be bacteria in the subsurface alive today? These are the questions that lead us to explore Mars. The climate of Mars has obviously cooled dramatically. By studying the reasons for climate change on Mars, which lacks the complications of oceans, a biosphere, and industrial contaminants, we may begin to understand the forces driving climate change on Earth. As we begin to explore the universe and search for planets in other solar systems, we must first ask the question 'Did life occur on another planet in our own solar system?' and 'What are the minimal conditions necessary for the formation of life?'


What Are We Looking For?
The planet Mars landed in the middle of immense public attention on July 4, 1997, when Mars Pathfinder touched down on a windswept, rock-laden ancient flood plain. Two months later, Mars Global Surveyor went into orbit, sending back pictures of towering volcanoes and gaping chasms at resolutions never before seen.

In December 1998 and January 1999, another orbiter and lander were launched to Mars. And every 26 months over the next decade, when the alignment of Earth and Mars are suitable for launches, still more robotic spacecraft will join them at the red planet.

These spacecraft carry varied payloads, ranging from cameras and other sensors to rovers and robotic arms. Some of them have their roots in different NASA programs of science or technology development. But they all have the goal of understanding Mars better, primarily by delving into its geology, climate and history.

With the announcement in 1996 by a team of scientists that a meteorite believed to have come from Mars contained what might be the residue of ancient microbes, public interest became regalvanized by the possibility of past or present life there. The key to understanding whether life could have evolved on Mars, many scientists believe, is understanding the history of water on the planet.


Mars Exploration: Fundamental Questions
What is the meteorology and climate history of Mars?

What are, and where are, the reservoirs of water and carbon dioxide on Mars?
What is the process of climate change including behavior of the polar caps?
What does the history of climate change on Mars tell us about Earth?
Has there ever been life on Mars?

What is the evidence for, and timing of, warmer, wetter past conditions?
Where is the evidence for past life likely to be found on Mars?
How do we recognize evidence of past life and sample Mars properly?
What is the geology and inventory of resources on Mars?

What is the interior structure of Mars and is the planet active today?
What do the global topography and geologic structure tell about the planet's evolution?
What are the global inventory and distribution of near surface materials and volatiles?
Should Mars be the next destination for human exploration?


Mars And Water
Mars perhaps first caught public fancy in the late 1870s, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli reported using a telescope to observe canali, or channels, on Mars. A possible mistranslation of this word as canals may have fired the imagination of Percival Lowell, an American businessman with an interest in astronomy. Lowell founded an observatory in Arizona, where his observations of the red planet convinced him that the canals were dug by intelligent beings - a view which he energetically promoted for many years.

By the turn of the century, popular songs told of sending messages between Earth and Mars by way of huge signal mirrors. On the dark side, H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds portrayed an invasion of Earth by technologically superior Martians desperate for water. In the early 1900s novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, known for the Tarzan series, also entertained young readers with tales of adventures among the exotic inhabitants of Mars, which he called Barsoom.

Fact began to turn against such imaginings when the first robotic spacecraft were sent to Mars in the 1960s. Pictures from the first flyby and orbiter missions showed a desolate world, pockmarked with craters like Earth's Moon. The first wave of Mars exploration culminated in the Viking mission, which sent two orbiters and two landers to the planet in 1975. The landers included experiments that conducted chemical tests in search of life. Most scientists interpreted the results of these tests as negative, deflating hopes of a world where life is widespread.

The science community had many other reasons for being interested in Mars apart from searching for life; the next mission on the drawing boards, Mars Observer, concentrated on a study of the planet's geology and climate. Over the next 20 years, however, new developments in studies on Earth came to change the way that scientists thought about life and Mars.

One was the 1996 announcement by a team from Stanford University, NASA's Johnson Space Center and Quebec's McGill University that a meteorite believed to have originated on Mars contained what might be the fossils of ancient microbes. This rock and other so-called Mars meteorites discovered on several continents on Earth are believed to have been blasted away from the red planet by asteroid or meteor impacts. They are thought to come from Mars because gases trapped in some of the rocks match the composition of Mars' atmosphere. Not all scientists agreed with the conclusions of the team announcing the discovery of fossils, but it reopened the issue of life on Mars.

Other developments that shaped scientists' thinking included new research on how and where life thrives on Earth. The fundamental requirements for life as we know it are liquid water, organic compounds and an energy source for synthesizing complex organic molecules. Beyond these basics, we do not yet understand the environmental and chemical evolution that leads to the origin of life. But in recent years it has become increasingly clear that life can thrive in settings much different from the longheld notion of a tropical soup rich in organic nutrients.

In the 1980s and 1990s, biologists found that microbial life has an amazing flexibility for surviving in extreme environments - niches that by turn are extraordinarily hot, or cold, or dry, or under immense pressures - that would be completely inhospitable to humans or complex animals. Some scientists even concluded that life may have begun on Earth in heat vents far under the ocean's surface.

This in turn had its effect on how scientists thought about Mars. Life might not be so widespread that it would be found at the foot of a lander spacecraft, but it may have thrived billions of years ago in an underground thermal spring. Or it might still exist in some form in niches below the frigid, dry, windswept surface wherever there might be liquid water.

NASA scientists also began to rethink how to look for signs of past or current life on Mars. In this new view, the markers of life may well be so subtle that the range of test equipment required to detect it would be far too complicated to package onto a spacecraft. It made more sense to collect samples of Martian rock, soil and air to bring back to Earth, where they could be subjected to much more extensive laboratory testing with state-of-the-art equipment.

Mars and Water Mars today is too cold, with an atmosphere that is too thin, to support liquid water on its surface. Yet scientists who studied images from the Viking orbiters kept encountering features that appeared to be formed by flowing water - among them deep channels and canyons, and even features that appeared to be ancient lake shorelines. Added to this were more recent observations by Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor which suggested widespread flowing water in the planet's past. Some scientists identified features which they believe appear to be carved by torrents of water with the force of 10,000 Mississippi Rivers.

There is no general agreement, however, on what form water took on the early Mars. Two competing views are currently popular in the science community. According to one theory, Mars was once much warmer and wetter, with a thicker atmosphere; it may well have boasted lakes or oceans, rivers and rain. According to the other theory, Mars was always cold, but water trapped as underground ice was periodically released when heating caused ice to melt and gush forth onto the surface.

In either case, the question of what happened to the water remains a mystery. Most scentists do not feel that Mars' climate change was necessarily caused by a cataclysmic event such as an asteroid impact that, perhaps, disturbed the planet's polar orientation or orbit. Many believe that the demise of flowing water on the surface could have resulted from gradual climate change over many millennia as the planet lost its atmosphere.

Under either the warmer-and-wetter or the always-cold scenario, Mars must have had a thicker atmosphere in order to support water that flowed on the surface even only occasionally. If the planet's atmosphere became thinner, liquid water would rapidly evaporate. Over time, carbon dioxide gas reacts with elements in rocks and becomes locked up as a kind of compound called a carbonate. What's left of Mars' atmosphere today is overwhelmingly carbon dioxide.

On Earth, shifting tectonic plates are continually plowing carbonates and other minerals under the surface; heated by magmas, carbon dioxide is released and spews forth in volcanic eruptions, replenishing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although Mars has no known active volcanoes and there are no signs of fresh lava flows, it had abundant volcanic activity in its past. However, Mars appears to have no tectonic plates, so a critical link in the process that leads to carbon dioxide replenishment in Earth's atmosphere is missing. In short, Mars' atmosphere could have been thinned out over many eons by entrapment of carbon dioxide in rocks across its surface.

That scenario, however, is just a theory. Regardless of the history and fate of the atmosphere, scientists also do not understand what happened to Mars' water. Some undoubtedly must have been lost to space. Water ice has been detected in the permanent cap at Mars' north pole, and may exist in the cap at the south pole. But much water is probably trapped under the surface - either as ice or, if near a heat source, possibly in liquid form well below the surface.

linkwa (http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/images/mars-sea2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/why.html&h=348&w=512&sz=66&hl=en&start=4&sig2=29XdiUL3t2jpq7O5kZyeNw&um=1&tbnid=rdglN8_7_cS70M:&tbnh=89&tbnw=131&ei=twRcSMPqF6b8ggKYxMjPDg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENCA278%26sa%3DG)

[DesiBaba]

Now all the UFO buffs will crawl out of the woodwork :D



these kinda UFO buffs are numbnuts

[max de Indiana]

these kinda UFO buffs are numbnuts


DB..you can expact Such (http://www.jumpcut.com/media/dyn/44/480d/949aab145fc9e83003f7a7c2ec/view.jpg) beautiful alien girls on mars :D :D

[echarcha]

intresting article abt mars

Why Explore Mars?

After Earth, Mars is the planet with the most hospitable climate in the solar system. So hospitable that it may once have harbored primitive, bacteria-like life. Outflow channels and other geologic features provide ample evidence that billions of years ago liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars. Although liquid water may still exist deep below the surface of Mars, currently the temperature is too low and the atmosphere too thin for liquid water to exist at the surface.

What caused the change in Mars' climate? Were the conditions necessary for life to originate ever present on Mars? Could there be bacteria in the subsurface alive today? These are the questions that lead us to explore Mars. The climate of Mars has obviously cooled dramatically. By studying the reasons for climate change on Mars, which lacks the complications of oceans, a biosphere, and industrial contaminants, we may begin to understand the forces driving climate change on Earth. As we begin to explore the universe and search for planets in other solar systems, we must first ask the question 'Did life occur on another planet in our own solar system?' and 'What are the minimal conditions necessary for the formation of life?'



Ha ha ha ha.. Now I know why this sudden interest in Mars! Dear Vice President Al Gore...are you listening?? :D One more opportunity for you to start your mantra of global warming :D :D

[deshpremi]

How do they know it was ice, and not dry ice (frozen Carbon Dioxide)???

Even dry ice looks the same and would evaporate in some time...

[BABU_HYDERABADI]

How do they know it was ice, and not dry ice (frozen Carbon Dioxide)???

Even dry ice looks the same and would evaporate in some time...

I think to have Dry ice form in any environment naturally, u need to have extreme conditions, way more than what u find on MARS.

[DesiBaba]

NASA confirms water on Mars!

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander

"We have water," said William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument on Phoenix.

"We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted," he said, referring to the craft's instruments.

NASA on Thursday also extended the mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander by five weeks, saying its work was moving beyond the search for water to exploring whether the red planet was ever capable of sustaining life.

"We are extending the mission through September 30," Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, told a televised news conference.

The extension will add about $2 million to the $420 million cost of landing Phoenix on May 25 for what was a scheduled three-month mission, Meyer said.

Boynton said that water was positively identified after the lander's robotic arm delivered a soil sample on Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by heating.

"We hope to be able to answer the question of whether this was a habitable zone on Mars. It will be for future missions to find if anyone is home on this environment," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith told the news conference.

Mission scientists said in June that Martian soil was more alkaline than expected and had traces of magnesium, sodium, potassium and other elements. They described the findings as a "huge step forward."

Meyer said the scientific proof of the existence of water meant that Phoenix could "move from looking for water to seeing whether there were habitats for life.

"We are moving towards understanding whether there were or could be places on Mars that are habitable," Meyer said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080731/sc_nm/space_mars_dc

[jammy69]

chalo accha hai then ppl can prove now that men are from mars but how will they prove that women are from venus :D

[rahulpsharma]

Tell me if there is Oil on Mars .. that's what is more interesting right now :)

Saturn's moon Titan has huge lakes of Hydrocarbons...... The only downside that we may have to lay a 3 billion miles long pipeline...... or invade Saturn to eliminate WMDs....!!!!! :)

[echarcha]

Ifr there is no oil on Mars, then stop further explorations. Lets look for oil based planets. I still have a dream of buying a big SUV!!