NASA confirms water on Mars

Tests aboard NASA’s Phoe­nix Mars Lan­der have con­firmed fro­zen wa­ter ex­ists on the Red Plan­et, the agen­cy an­nounced Thurs­day. The lan­der’s robotic arm de­liv­ered the sam­ple Wednes­day to an in­stru­ment that iden­ti­fies va­pors pro­duced by the heat­ing of sam­ples.

“We have wa­ter,” said Wil­liam Boyn­ton of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Ar­i­zo­na, lead sci­ent­ist for the Ther­mal and Evolved-Gas An­a­lyz­er, or TEGA.

“We’ve seen ev­i­dence for this wa­ter ice be­fore in ob­serva­t­ions by the Mars Od­ys­sey or­biter and in dis­ap­pear­ing chunks ob­served by Phoe­nix last month, but this is the first time Mar­tian wa­ter has been touched and tast­ed.”

With en­tic­ing re­sults so far and the craft in good shape, NASA officials said, opera­t­ional fund­ing for the mis­sion will be ex­tended through Sept. 30, add­ing five weeks to the 90 days of the ori­gi­nal mis­sion.“We want to take full ad­van­tage of hav­ing this re­source in one of the most in­ter­est­ing loca­t­ions on Mars,” said Mi­chael Mey­er, chief sci­ent­ist for the Mars Ex­plora­t­ion Pro­gram at NASA Head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton. The soil sam­ple came from a trench about 2 inches (5 cm) deep, re­search­ers said. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard lay­er of fro­zen soil. Two at­tempts to de­liv­er sam­ples of icy soil on days when fresh ma­te­ri­al was ex­posed were foiled when the sam­ples be­came stuck in­side the scoop. Most of the ma­te­ri­al in Wednes­day’s sam­ple had been ex­posed to the air for two days, sci­ent­ists said, let­ting some of the wa­ter in the sam­ple va­por­ize and mak­ing the soil eas­i­er to han­dle. “Mars is giv­ing us some sur­pris­es,” said Phoe­nix prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Pe­ter Smith of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Ar­i­zo­na. “We’re ex­cit­ed be­cause sur­prises are where dis­cov­er­ies come from. One sur­prise is how the soil is behav­ing. The ice-rich lay­ers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, dif­fer­ent from what we ex­pected from all the Mars sim­ula­t­ion test­ing we’ve done. That has pre­sented chal­lenges for de­liv­ering sam­ples, but we’re find­ing ways to work with it and we’re gath­er­ing lots of in­forma­t­ion to help us un­der­stand this soil.” Since land­ing on May 25, Phoe­nix has been stu­dy­ing soil with an on­board chem­is­try lab, TEGA, a mi­cro­scope, a con­duc­ti­vity probe and cam­er­as. The sci­ence team is try­ing to de­ter­mine wheth­er the wa­ter ice ev­er thaws enough for life to sur­vive and if the chem­i­cal ma­te­ri­als for life are pre­s­ent. The craft also made a full-circle, col­or pan­o­rama of its sur­round­ings. “The de­tails and pat­terns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated ter­rain as far as the eye can see,” said Mark Lem­mon of Tex­as A&M Uni­ver­s­ity, lead sci­ent­ist for Phoe­nix’s Sur­face Stereo Im­ag­er cam­era. “They help us plan mea­sure­ments we’re mak­ing with­in reach of the robotic arm and in­ter­pret those mea­sure­ments on a wid­er scale.” The Phoe­nix mis­sion is led by Smith at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Ar­i­zo­na with proj­ect man­age­ment at NASA’s Je­t Pro­pul­sion Lab­o­r­a­to­ry in Pas­a­de­na, Calif., and de­vel­op­ment part­ner­ship at Lock­heed Mar­tin in Den­ver.