Martian Ice Discovered Beneath Red Soil, NASA Says (Update2)

Martian Ice Discovered Beneath Red Soil, NASA Says (Update2)

www.bloomberg.com

Martian Ice Discovered Beneath Red Soil, NASA Says (Update2)

By Demian McLean

June 20 (Bloomberg) -- The existence of ice on Mars was confirmed today by NASA scientists, the first time frozen water has been sampled on another planet. Water in liquid form is an essential ingredient for life.

Whitish, dice-sized chunks, which were dug from the rocky red soil and warmed in the sun, vanished four days after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Phoenix probe dug them up June 15. They confirm what NASA satellites have suggested for years: Frozen water exists several centimeters beneath Mars's surface.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 20-6-2008 by battlestargalactica]

Headline: Please use the original story headline from your source.

[edit on 20-6-2008 by 12m8keall2c]

Thats a good first step to figure what may or may not be happening on Mars, ICE! Ice means water, water possibly means life, past present or future!

Gawd nasa is slow, they meter out the information about that remarkable planet to us lowly ignorant peons eh?

www.bloomberg.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I can't help but wonder; has NASA thought about taking a sealed container of water to Mars and opening it on some sort of remote?
That way we (they) could actually measure how long it would take for water ice to "decay" in that environment.
I'm no rocket scientist, but when I train new people in my field I always remind them that "we're squeezing zits here, don't turn this into brain surgery".

``When I look over this flat plain of rock and dirt, it's amazing what we're looking at,'' said principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson, which is co- managing the project. ``If you got a giant broom and swept if off, it's a big ice sheet.''

From looking at the pictures from NASA, it does look like a giant ice sheet

reply to post by LAUGHING-CAT
That would be worthwhile and interesting, however I think we know the atmosphere and the temps etc. It's just that Nasa most likely does not reveal ALL they know about it.

It seems they are feeding us piecemeal info to soften the information delivered to us.

reply to post by infinite

Yea the dust covering the ice sheet is prolly what keeps it as ice and not outgassing into the scant atmosphere. Shaded craters and other locations there help to keep the warm temps down, then the cold part of the day enables the ice formation...my take on it...

Although water on Mars is not exactly a news, its a nice cross check with other findings. Now lets wait for the instruments to say that finally.

reply to post by rocksolidbrain

Thanks for the image post

Thats some strange looking ice. Do they know the composition, is it water primarily or a mixture of Co2, methane etc?

It's the air pressure that causes the Ice to sublimate not the temperature.

reply to post by sardion2000

So the ice sublimates under the low pressure on mars, it must exist only in small amounts, but scattered throughout the surface areas..hmmm cool stuff.

the temps on mars vary, but the numbers I've sen are around -70, so I think this rules out CO2 ice formation (dryice), since that would evaporate at such 'warm' temps.

It may be colder in other areas at times, so CO2 ice could form too..I think.

Quaid... start the reactor

Sorry, I couldn't resist.