“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,” scientist William Boynton said in a written statement released by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, “but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”
Boynton is lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer team based at the University of Arizona.
Details of the composition of the water were not immediately released. The sample came from a 2-inch deep trench carefully carved by the lander’s robotic arm.
The presence of water is one of more dramatic discoveries made by the Phoenix since it touched down on Mars near the pole May 24. NASA announced it had secured funding to extend the Phoenix mission through Sept. 30.
More here: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/
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Anthony –
Since there has been so much discussion of predictive modeling (like that used to support the recent Supreme Court decision) I thought this post by Steve M would be a good point for discussion. It is, of course, unrelated to the Martian Ice. (Marvin the Martian keeps it frozen, because liquid water would cause an army to sprout… 😉
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3361
This should be a major discussion point in EPA rule making…
Great. Wonder how long it will be before we’re buying bottled Mars water…
Water on the desert planet. Yes, but it’s still cold as hell!
Don’t see Mars becoming a tourist hot spot any time soon.
Congrats to NASA, JPL, & the fine folk at Arizona for all that well done hard work.
Well, NASA and the press have been saying for weeks that they have “evidence” for water on Mars based upon the disappearing chunks. But disappearing chunks is only evidence of something disappearing. It was just a theory that the something was water. I’m glad they finally confirmed it with real tests, but it shows the same confusion between theory and fact that plagues science in general and global warming theory in particular.
Of course, we’ve known that there is water in comets for a long time, so I fail to see why this is such a “dramatic” discovery. It’s not the first time we’ve discovered water that’s not on the earth. It’s really all about trying to find little green men. And they virtually equate the discovery of extraterrestrial water with extraterrestrial life. I mean, you can’t find a single press release about the discovery of water without mentioning that it’s probably necessary for life. They haven’t been able to find signs of ET so they continually talk about the “water necessary for life” and “earth-like planets”. SETI isn’t dead – it’s about all that NASA does these days when they’re not manipulating climate data.
I think it’s about time NASA does something useful like mining the moon. When countries sent out explorers around they world, a big part was to find useful things like gold and other valuable commodities.
Finally; something that makes me start to believe in NASA again.
I never would have guessed. I always thought that the Grand Canyon like features on Mars were just Hollywood cg effects.
There is only one small step required to evolve from 3 atom H20 molecules to 10,000,000 atom DNA molecules. Just ask any liberal – they know the truth about all things scientific.
If you want to test this out, try mixing graphite with distilled water. By morning you will be growing dinosaurs and palm trees in your bathtub. Maybe even Roswell aliens.
The first ice melted by humans on Mars.
Call please:
Dr. James E. Hansen
Columbia University
750 Armstrong Hall
2880 Broadway
New York, NY 10025 USA
Phone: (212) 678-5500
I LOVE http://www.surfacestations.org
Reply: applause~charles the moderator
I don’t think profitable ventures are in the realm of possibility for now. There’s nothing on the surface of the moon, for example, but silicates – it’s never had the volcanic or tectonic activity that has brought interesting minerals to the surface on earth. Not to mention that the energy transportation costs make anything you could possibly find cost prohibitive to send back.
One possibility would be compounds that can only be manufactured in a zero-g environment, but even those, if valuable ones are found, could best be made in some kind of earth orbiting space dock. Why waste the energy to go 180,000 miles further than you need to go?
All our yearnings notwithstanding, there’s really no good reason to go back to the moon and no reason to send anything but robots to mars. Look at it this way – Antarctica is far more hospitable to life (at least it has a breathable atmosphere!) and we don’t do much with it. Mars is a cool place to play with some fine new shiny toys, but that’s about it.
“We have water. and we have tasted it.” How was this magical transport of water from Mars to the Earth done?
Yeah, I saw it last time I was there! It doesn’t taste very good though.
Fernando:
O onde fica você mora no Brazil? (I did not use translation software so that may be mangled).
Dear Jeez:
I live in Sao Paulo:
I followed the fight every day. is very difficult for me put technical contributions in colloquial language (english). and has many people qualify.
best regards
It is a great scientific result.
The Phoenix team released another very interesting set of images a few days ago. The ground underneath the Lander has deformed since the landing. A really amazing before and after at the link below.
(A pebble in the middle of the image moves, another pebble appears out of the ground at the top-left-centre, cracks appear, and there is a very odd object at the bottom right corner which needs to be identified.)
http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/snow_queen.gif
Now that NASA has found water on Mars they can figure out what the temperature on Earth is.
If I’m not mistaken, there have been only 6 Apollo missions that landed on the moon. They collected a few rocks from the surface of six places on the moon. Without setting up a base and really exploring, there’s no telling what valuable minerals may be there. That’s my point. Maybe there’s a huge diamond deposit; or gold; or platinum. Who knows based on a few hundred pounds of rocks dug up with a shovel? The payback really cannot be calculated without knowing what’s there. Hey, maybe they’ll find a new mineral that will absorb 1,000,000,000 times it’s own weight of carbon dioxide! We can bring it back to earth and suck it all out of the atmosphere and save the planet! Of course, maybe that’s the reason the moon has no atmosphere. In fact, I think the lack of atmosphere on the moon is evidence for this mineral. 😉
Last year there was a great conversation on RC about terraforming Mars.
The crew over there believes that a 0.00007 change in atmospheric CO2 concentration will make earth uninhabitable, and they also believe that we can turn Mars into a tropical paradise.
Geniuses, no doubt. I wonder how many of them made it past 3rd grade science?
NASA occasionally demonstrates thet they still can do what they are supposed to do. Any bets on whether Phoenix survives the winter? Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to run for 90 days. Years later, still ticking.
However, I’m staying here until they find some Bourbon.
Richard Wright, forget water. Astronomers have discovered enormous clouds of the far more important ALCOHOL in the galaxy. Now, there is some good news.
My Gud, man made warming on Mars!
Is there no limit to our evildome?
Richar Wright, as I tell people, we, as humanity, have the whole solar system as our resource base; at our finger-tips. And by the time we run out of that stuff, we will have moved on to the local stellar systems, etc.
Patrick wrote:
Here’s an idea: Let NASA terraform Mars to prove their global climate models correct. Once they work out the bugs on Mars, then we can let them fool around with Earth. Mars is the perfect test bed – planetary engineering with no worries since there is no life there.
Fernando, I’m in Rio once or twice a year, so who knows, maybe I’ll make to SP sometime and we can split a carafe de Brahma?
It is quite possible that life exists miles under the surface deep in the rock just as it does on Earth. The constant bath of UV light over millions of years has probably sterilized the surface (and the top several feet of it, in fact) but life could be happily chugging along in the rocks a half-mile down.
You’d think this would be bigger news? I haven’t heard much about this in the media. This was the primary mission of this rover correct? One of the most important scientific discovers ever, with mind boggling implications. The next obvious step is to find life, or evidence of life. I’d like to think Mars had life at one point, especially if it had liquid water.
Can anyone explain for what reason the trench was dug “carefully”? Was it to avoid disturbing the sensitive local fauna?