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Phoenix Mars Lander Hits Halfway Point
It doesn't come easy writes "There is a nice write-up over at Space.com about Phoenix, NASA's next Mars lander. The article includes a few more details about the steps NASA is taking to ensure a successful mission." The Phoenix project was first given the green light earlier this year and hopes to benefit from some hard lessons learned on earlier projects.
Some water on the surface of mars has been already detected. However, whether it be frozen or liquid, the search water beneath the regolith is the single most important priority for any manned exploration of our celestial neighbor. Any water present in subsurface acquifers would open the floodgates for progress on mars. It would: provide for human habitation, be a veritable hotbed for xenobiology, and provide the chemical components for fuel cells and even rocket propellant. Our generation needs something exciting as motivation..cross your fingers.
NASA's next Mars lander, the Phoenix mission, will head for the northern arctic region of the red planet in 2007, not only ready to dig for subsurface water ice but also probe for habitats of present day life. Are they really expecting to find habitats of present day life? If so, what are the chances of such life actually surviving to this day?
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It sublimes, which means that it goes directly from a solid to a gas.
This is more to do with pressure than temperature-it doesn't mean the ice is melting becasue it's 200 kelvin or anything.
If you were on earth, that might be the case. Several factors are at work here: Earth's air pressure at sea level is 14 lb/in (1015ish millibars); on the other hand, martian atmospheric pressures are more on the order of 5 millibars. Thats damned low. Aside from that, you have an exceptionally arid atmosphere and most of the ice on mars is actually CO2. Add all of this together and the ice doesnt even have a chance to melt; it simply sublimes away into the atmosphere.