Water on Mars confirmed, w00t
Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!
This came from the Mars Phoenix Lander’s Twitter at 5:15pm today, followed 9 minutes later by: "Whoohoo! Was keeping my eye on some chunks of bright stuff & they disappeared! Sublimated! So it can’t be salt, it’s ice." The Phoenix Lander has been on Mars for 25 days now, exploring the geologic history of the planet’s arctic, investigating whether the planet could have supported microbial life in the past. The machine, powered by two 18-foot solar panels, has been digging around in a trench informally called Dodo-Goldilocks, uncovering clumps of “bright stuff” on June 15, and when it came back to the same place today, several of those clumps were gone, vaporized after being uncovered by the lander. “It must be ice, these little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of University of Arizona, Tucson. NASA and the university will have a teleconference tomorrow at 1pm Eastern, to present the findings.
Mars Phoenix Twitter
Phoenix Mars Lander, NASA.gov
Ice Water Found on Mars, LAist.com