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.
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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.
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Almost two weeks after NASA’s latest robotic explorer made a picture-perfect landing on Mars, it was ready to get down to work. The Phoenix’s main mission is to scoop up samples of dirt and ice and look for evidence of whether liquid water ever existed on the planet, and whether the conditions may have ever existed to support primitive life. By Friday it had unpacked its 8-foot robotic arm and practiced scraping dirt from the polar plain, and it was geared up for its first real tests.
But when the Phoenix carried its first scoop of dirt to a tiny oven where the dirt would be analyzed, something went wrong. Photos show that the robotic arm did deposit a scoop of dirt in the proper screened opening, but sensors in the oven reported that no particles had made it through the screen and into the oven.
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Two days after a flawless touchdown on the surface of Mars, the Phoenix Lander is busily snapping pictures of itself and of the polar landscape.
It landed in an arctic plain near the north pole called Vastitas Borealis, where it is expected to discover water ice mixed in with the frozen soil. In accordance with NASA’s mandate to “follow the water,” its mission is to search for evidence that liquid water may have once flowed on Mars, and to investigate whether conditions may have ever allowed for primitive biological life.
Before the Phoenix’s landing, NASA scientists nervously pointed out that only 55 percent of all attempts to land a vehicle on the Martian surface have been successful; they also noted the spacecraft that the Phoenix most resembles, the Mars Polar Lander, crashed in 1999. However, the Phoenix made it down with only one slight hitch.
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