Phoenix Mars Lander May Have Uncovered Ice
A view of the ground underneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. See more info below.
Scientists say the Phoenix Mars Lander's thrusters may have uncovered a large patch of ice on the Martian surface.
A view of the ground underneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander adds to evidence that descent thrusters dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that may be ice.
The image received Friday night from the spacecraft's Robotic Arm Camera shows patches of smooth and level surfaces beneath the thrusters.
"This suggests we have an ice table under a thin layer of loose soil," said the lead scientist for the Robotic Arm Camera, Horst Uwe Keller of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg- Lindau, Germany.
"We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for Phoenix. "The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice."
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
More information about the picture
The Robotic Arm Camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander captured this image underneath the lander on the fifth Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Descent thrusters on the bottom of the lander are visible at the top of the image.
This view from the north side of the lander toward the southern leg shows smooth surfaces cleared from overlying soil by the rocket exhaust during landing. One exposed edge of the underlying material was seen in Sol 4 images, but the newer image reveals a greater extent of it. The abundance of excavated smooth and level surfaces adds evidence to a hypothesis that the underlying material is an ice table covered by a thin blanket of soil.
The bright-looking surface material in the center, where the image is partly overexposed may not be inherently brighter than the foreground material in shadow.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech//University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute
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Sweet! Can we live on water alone? Lets head to MArs! I am ready. Looks like a cool place to hang.
JJ
You know when you think about it, all those people claiming we already found life on Mars... well then why was the Pheonix Lander sent out to find life on Mars? LOL!
"If the rumor holds true, it would be the first direct confirmation of water ice beyond Earth." Incorrect. Europa and Enceladus are known to be covered with water ice. About half of the mass of Ganymede and Callisto is water, most of it frozen. The rings of Saturn are also composed almost entirely of water ice.
I know that some brilliant scientist was ready for anything and thought to
take pictures of the ground under the lander.We don't know that this was
something they expected to see, it seems like an accidental discovery. If
that is so, then all the more reason why someone needs to be commended for
creating a device that would be able to look under itself to take a
picture of the ground.
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