Blogs / 80beats

Hope you’re not bored of stories about water ice on Mars: Now that scientists have found it, they can’t seem to stop finding it. Just a few months after the dear, departed Mars Phoenix Lander made history by touching and analyzing water ice beneath the soil near the Martian north pole, researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered massive glaciers near the equator. The glaciers, buried under rocky debris, are said to be more than three times the size of Los Angeles, up to half a mile thick and skirt the edges of mountains and cliffs [Telegraph].

The glaciers’ presence means that rovers on future scientific missions won’t have to land at the freezing cold poles to study the planet’s ice. The glaciers could even prove helpful as a source of drinkable water to future astronauts exploring Mars. “This says there may be samples of ice within our reach,” [researcher Jim] Head said. “If we’re thinking ahead to human exploration of Mars, it means we could go to some of these places and actually have water ice there” [Wired News]. Astronauts could also make hydrogen fuel from the ice, researchers say.

(more…)

Just after NASA made the sad announcement that the Mars Phoenix Lander had run out of power and ceased communicating, word comes of power problems with the Mars rover Spirit, which has been blithely rolling over the Martian terrain for almost five years.

NASA revealed yesterday that dust storms last week left Spirit’s solar panels coated with dust and caused power levels to drop to an all-time low, and that the rover then shut down operations and went dormant. Spirit’s scientists are now hoping for a message signaling that the rover survived the storm and has recovered power.

Spirit may emerge unscathed. “We are cautiously optimistic that we can get through this dust storm without a catastrophe,” says rover project scientist Bruce Banerdt…. That’s because spring is dawning in the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located, and the extra sunlight means the rover needs less energy to run its heaters. Had the storm occurred six months ago, during the local winter solstice, the craft would have less chance of survival, says Banerdt [New Scientist].

(more…)

After five months of scraping and digging into the soil at a lonely spot near the Martian north pole, NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander has finally succumbed to the cold, dark Martian winter. NASA scientists announced yesterday that they hadn’t received a communication from the lander since November 2, and pronounced the death of Phoenix.

While the mission was expected to end this way, with the lander’s solar panels unable to get enough light from the fading sun and temperatures dropping rapidly, Phoenix’s legions of fans couldn’t help but mourn the demise of the robot explorer. NASA official Doug McCuistion counseled people to view Phoenix’s end as “an Irish wake rather than a funeral. It’s certainly been a grand adventure,” McCuistion said [AP].

The beginning of the end for Phoenix came on Oct. 27, just after Phoenix finished its last major experiment analyzing Martian soil, [when] an unexpected dust storm hit. The batteries, already low from running the experiment, ran out of energy. The spacecraft first put itself into a low-energy “safe mode,” then fell silent. It revived itself on Oct. 30, but, with the dust still swirling, was never able to fully recharge its batteries. Each day, the solar panels would generate enough electricity for the spacecraft to wake up, but then the batteries drained again [The New York Times]. NASA will continue to listen for a signal for a few more weeks, but no further communications are expected.

(more…)

The cold, dark winter is fast descending on Mars, and now it’s time for NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander, which has conducted five months of (literally) groundbreaking research near the Martian north pole, to begin slowly shutting down. Phoenix’s Earth-bound managers announced yesterday that the lander’s solar panels are generating less power from the decreasing sunlight, while at the same time the craft’s heaters require more energy to keep the lander operational as temperatures drop.

NASA’s engineers were prepared for this inevitability, and say they’ll now begin to shut down some of its systems to save power for the lander’s main camera and meteorological instruments. “If we did nothing, it wouldn’t be long before the power needed to operate the spacecraft would exceed the amount of power it generates on a daily basis,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein…. “By turning off some heaters and instruments, we can extend the life of the lander by several weeks and still conduct some science” [The Tech Herald].

(more…)

Chalk another discovery up to the Mars Phoenix Lander. Several months after finding water ice beneath the Martian soil, the NASA robot has now turned its gaze upward to the sky, and has observed a light snowfall over the polar region. Scientists said the discovery of snow on Mars was made by an instrument that shined a laser into clouds about two miles above the ground, revealing the presence of ice crystals. “Nothing like this has ever been seen on Mars,” said [scientist] Jim Whiteway [Los Angeles Times].

The ice crystals quickly vaporized as they fell through the atmosphere of Mars, but researchers say they’ll be watching during the next two months to see if the snow ever reaches the ground. Over the past few months, as the Martian winter has moved in, Phoenix has also observed frost, ground fog, and clouds of ice crystals.

(more…)

Just as summer is giving way to autumn in the Earth’s northern hemisphere, the seasons are changing on Mars, too. Near the Martian north pole, the Mars Phoenix Lander is watching its environment grow darker and colder, bringing Phoenix a little closer the end of its mission each day. Meanwhile, in Mars’ southern hemisphere, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been reinvigorated with increased sunlight to power their solar panels, and are on the move once more.

Phoenix, which has conducted fascinating experiments on the planet’s soil and water ice, saw the sun dip below the horizon yesterday for the first time since it landed on May 25. NASA officials originally planned a 90-day mission for Phoenix, which would have ended operations this week, but since the lander is in excellent condition NASA extended its mission. “It’s doing fabulously,” said Barry Goldstein, NASA’s Phoenix project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But I’ve made it clear to the science team that the warranty’s over…. The vehicle is not going to tip over and die,” Goldstein said. “But we’re getting to the point where we’re going to start seeing the creaks and groans” [SPACE.com].

(more…)

The deep furrows carved in the sides of Martian craters were most likely formed by snowmelt in the planet’s recent geological past, according to a new study. The findings indicate that seasonal flows of liquid water may have streamed down the craters’ flanks when Mars was a wetter planet, as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago. Today, the Red Planet is a colder and drier place; although the Mars Phoenix Lander found water ice buried under the dirt near the north pole, no liquid water currently exists on the planet, and any ice exposed to air quickly turns into vapor due to the low atmospheric pressure.

The gullies were first sighted several years ago, but researchers couldn’t immediately determine what had caused them. [S]ome scientists proposed that the features were formed either by dry avalanches or by groundwater pushing up from below the surface and running down the sides of craters [SPACE.com]. But in a new study of crater images taken by the Mars orbiters, researchers found evidence that ice and melting snow were the culprits.

(more…)

Exploring Mars looks like so much fun, everyone want to get in on the act. Following the path blazed by the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the NASA lander Phoenix, which are all currently active on the Red Planet, the European Space Agency (ESA) has designed a rover that is expected to take off for Mars in 2013 and land on the surface in 2015. The ESA’s ExoMars mission is designed to examine the planet’s geology and to search for signs of past life.

ESA officials boast that the two prototypes, nicknamed Brandon and Bruno, are more maneuverable and more independent than previous robots that have made the journey to Mars, and say that these advantages will allow their rover to see more of the planet. Says engineer Chris Draper: “Obviously, the American MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that were put up by Nasa enjoyed an extreme amount of success. They were able to travel large distances, well beyond their planned lifetimes. But we’re hoping that with our baby, we’ll be able to go places that are actually much further” [BBC News].

(more…)

A week after confirming that the Mars Phoenix Lander had discovered ice in the Martial soil, NASA scientists announced that it may have uncovered something else—perchlorate, a type of organic salt that had never been found on Mars before.

At a press conference on Tuesday, researchers said the find raises a number of questions about Martian geochemistry, particularly about the flow of water on the planet. But they said its discovery will likely have little bearing on the key question of whether or not Mars might be able to host life [New Scientist].

(more…)

The plucky Mars Phoenix Lander has completed yet another portion of its mission successfully by gathering direct physical evidence that there is water ice on Mars. The lander had previously taken pictures of white chunks at the bottom of a trench it dug; scientists deduced that those chunks were water ice because they vaporized as the Phoenix watched. But now, by heating a soil sample that contained a small amount of ice, scientists have confirmed the discovery. “We’ve now finally touched it and tasted it,” [said researcher] William V. Boynton…. “And I’d like to say, from my standpoint, it tastes very fine” [The New York Times].

To make the final call, the Phoenix delivered a scoop of soil to a tiny oven called the thermal and evolved-gas analyzer, or TEGA. When heated, the targeted material in the soil melted at the expected temperature [at which water melts], which Phoenix scientist William Boynton called definitive proof. “The fact that it melted at 0 degrees centigrade leaves very little doubt” that it is water, said Boynton [Los Angeles Times]. Sensors in the oven also tested the chemical makeup of the vapor released as the sample heated, and found the familiar combination of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom [The Washington Post].

(more…)

The Mars Phoenix Lander has encountered some difficulties in its attempts to analyze the icy soil of Mars. Although the scoop on the end of the lander’s robotic arm has effectively scraped up samples from the rock-hard ice layer just below the dirt surface, the samples have stuck in the scoop, and haven’t fallen into the waiting instrument below.

The Phoenix team tried two methods of picking up and delivering a sample of the icy dirt over the weekend. In both cases, most of the sample stuck inside the lander’s inverted scoop at the end of its 7.71-foot (2.35-meter) robotic arm. “It has really been a science experiment just learning how to interact with the icy soil on Mars — how it reacts with the scoop, its stickiness, whether it’s better to have it in the shade or sunlight,” [researcher Peter] Smith said [SPACE.com].

(more…)

Mars wasn’t always the cold, dry, and dusty planet that NASA’s rovers and landers are currently exploring. By mapping the mineral composition of wide swaths of the planet’s surface, researchers have discovered that parts of Mars once coursed with liquid water, which increases the possibility that it supported microbial life.

Using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers searched for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water’s interaction with rocks. They found phyllosilicates in thousands of places, in valleys, dunes and craters in the ancient southern highlands, pointing to an active role by water in Mars’s earliest geological era, the Noachian period, 4.6 to 3.8 billion years ago [AFP].

(more…)

The Mars Phoenix Lander may deserve a Nobel Prize by the time it’s through. Just a week after the robot explorer took the first pictures of water ice on the on Mars, NASA scientists have a new announcement: The Phoenix has analyzed a scoop of soil, and found that the Martian dirt has the necessary ingredients to support plant life. Researchers say the soil they tested is slightly alkaline, not harshly acidic as feared, and that it contains the mineral nutrients potassium, magnesium, and sodium.

“There’s nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly,” said mission scientist Samuel P. Kounaves of Tufts University. “We were flabbergasted.” Kounaves said that the soil was similar to what people would find in their back yards on Earth and that if organic material was added, “you could probably grow asparagus, but not strawberries” [The Washington Post].

(more…)

Scientists were pretty sure that their latest robot explorer, the Phoenix Lander, would discover water ice on Mars, but there was still cause for rejoicing when the Phoenix’s latest snapshots confirmed that they’d found it. [T]o actually see the ice was “tremendously exciting,” [principle investigator Peter] Smith said. “One of the biggest fears I’ve had on the mission is that we’d dig and dig and never find anything” [The New York Times].

The breakthough came over the course of the week. On Sunday, the Phoenix used its robotic arm to enlarge a trench it had been digging in the Martian soil, and snapped pictures of small white chunks at the bottom of the pit. NASA scientists said the white material could be either ice or a form of salt, and that time would tell. Yesterday, when the Phoenix took new photos of the same trench, scientists saw that many of the white chunks had vanished. That means the chunks were small pieces of ice that vaporized upon being exposed to the air, in a phase-change called sublimation. Salt could not undergo such a transformation, NASA says.

(more…)

The Phoenix Lander’s mission on Mars, and its whole reason for existence, is to search for water ice on our neighbor planet. NASA landed its robot explorer near Mars’ north pole, and scientists were delighted by a photograph of the surface beneath the Phoenix’s feet that showed a white substance beneath the dirt. But the Phoenix came up empty while looking for ice in its first scoop of soil last week, leading NASA scientists to ruefully predict that they’ll find the elusive ice in the next scoop.

The Phoenix analyzed the sample in its Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA), first cooking it to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, then boosting the temperature to 350 degrees. The instrument analyzed the gases given off by the warming sample, but found no water vapor.

(more…)