06-21-08, 05:31 AM
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Current Mood:  | Lander Finds Ice on Mars
Quote: Lander Finds Ice on Mars, Scientists Say
Discovery Is Key Clue In Determining Whether Planet Supported Life
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Scientists with the Phoenix Mars mission yesterday declared for certain that there is ice on the Red Planet, putting them an essential step closer to answering the question that has driven three decades of Mars exploration and centuries of Earth-bound speculation: Could there have been life there?
Pictures beamed 170 million miles to Earth from the Phoenix lander atop Mars's northern polar plain erased any doubt about the presence of ice, they said. Last Sunday, several dice-size solids were observed at the bottom of a trench that had been dug by Phoenix's robotic arm. On Thursday, they were gone.
The only reasonable explanation, the scientists said, is that the objects were pieces of ice that evaporated into the dry Martian atmosphere through a process called sublimation. And the presence of ice means that Mars might once have had liquid water, which is essential for life -- at least as it is known on Earth.
One possibility was that it was salt of some sort. But ice was always the more likely explanation. "Salt does not behave like that," said Mark Lemmon, a scientist at Texas A&M University who is in charge of Phoenix's stereo surface imager. "We found what we were looking for. This tells us we have water ice within reach of the arm."
| Source: Washington Post
Very possibly a “Eureka!” moment in space exploration. 
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