Phoenix Mars Lander Deploys Robotic Arm, Possibly Finds Ice

The Phoenix Mars Lander has successfully deployed its robotic arm and tested other instruments including a laser designed to detect dust, clouds, and fog. The arm will be used to dig up samples of the Martian surface, which will be analyzed as a possible habitat for life. A camera on the arm will allow pictures to be taken of the ground directly beneath the lander. The camera has already seen what may be ice, which was exposed when the soil was disturbed by the landing. The data collected by the arm will be compared to recent findings which suggest that water on Mars may have been too salty for most known forms of life.

Comments

Could be, could not be...

[lazy_nihilist]

Lets wait for the test data to confirm if it is ice. For all we know it "could" be oil ;-)

Re:Could be, could not be...

[barzok]

If it's oil, we'll need to invade, post-haste.

Re:Could be, could not be...

[AmigaMMC]

If that was oil the US would plan a manned mission for next year. They'd send the marines claiming that the Martians were hiding weapons of mass destruction.

Re:Could be, could not be...

[Tablizer]

scientist A: "Wow, that looks like frozen liquid. We found water, woohoo!"

scientist B: "The spectrum shows it to contain strong acids and heavy metals."

scientist A: "Yeah, we found strong acids and heavy metals on Mars!"

scientist B: "The signature matches that of the lander battery fluid."

scientist A: "Yay, we found leaky batteries on Mars, hurray we........oh fuck."

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't we already have two rovers on Mars that seem to have MUCH better capabilities than this thing?

The rovers can't dig as deep, nor could they have survived more than a season at these polar latitudes either. There isn't as much ice (or for that matter, any ice that we've been able to find) at the latitudes where the rovers are operating.

As for what we already have on Mars, we have rovers that have amazingly gone almost 10km each. That's about 1% of the distance they'd have to cover to get to where this one is. So in terms of "what we have on mars" that "are capable of finding out what the polar ice caps are like", we currently had nothing until Phoenix.

Extremophiles

[Gothmolly]

Just because its too salty for 'most' life doesn't mean its too salty for ANY life.

Re:Extremophiles

[spyder913]

"The scientists say that the handful of terrestrial halophiles -- species that can tolerate high salinity -- descended from ancestors that first evolved in purer waters. Based on what we know about Earth, they say that it's difficult to imagine life arising in acidic, oxidizing brines like those inferred for ancient Mars."

Looks like it is just very unlikely with what we know.

Re:Extremophiles

[v1]

We keep seeing these same generalizations going on when looking for life elsewhere.

Lets face it, odds are if we DO find life, it's going to be fundamentally different than what we're expecting it to be. Saying conditions aren't good for life anywhere based on what we consider habitable is silly. The reason our conditions are ideal for our life isn't because we got lucky and got the right combination of environment to grow up in, it's because we adapted to become the best suited for the environment we developed in.

I'll give them "initial conditions" though. Certain environments certainly lower the odds for genesis. Once you've achieved genesis however, evolution takes over, and so long as you don't have a fast severe change in conditions, life will adapt over time to become well-suited to whatever the environment can throw at it.

So unless you're looking for life that has just recently come to be, there's almost no point in examining conditions. Probably the only environmental necessity is reasonable temperatures. (and I mean very generous range, at least a ways over abs 0 and too low to melt lead)

Actually, on the high end, it would not completely surprise me to find life IN a sun. Whenever we look somewhere and say no life can exist there, it's too hot, too cold, too alkaline, too dry, whatever, we end up finding life. Recently we found life IN a rock, eating radioactivity. After that you pretty much have to be an optimist.

Re:Extremophiles

[Kjella]

Well, on the other hand you can argue that if there was a niche here on earth life would have evolved to fit it given the obvious benefits like having no enemies. So if we don't find life here on earth, are chances really that great that we'll find radically different life living under the same conditions on other planets? I suppose that's a difficult question, since it's hard to tell how much evolution is path-dependent or if the same basic creatures would form anyway.

Re:Extremophiles

[maxume]

What are you expecting life elsewhere to be? I'm expecting it to be something that takes advantage of energy gradients (food is essentially an energy gradient, it takes less energy to gather fruit than the fruit contains, similarly for prey) in order to maintain its own order at a level above that of the average environment that it exists in.

Re:Extremophiles

[AySz88]

I took a course with Steve Squyres (the principal investigator for the rover mission) in the fall semester. According to him, you can't look to Earth extremophiles as evidence that life can arise in these conditions. Extremophiles apparently all have adaptations such that, inside their cells, they can do their chemistry in 'normal' (non-acidic, non-salty, ...) conditions. If life were to arise in extreme conditions, they'd probably need totally different chemistry.

There's certainly a possibility of some exotic form of life arising in extreme (for us) conditions, but we shouldn't be expecting it to be possible, as there's no evidence that it can happen.

Re:Extremophiles

[DerekLyons]

Lets face it, odds are if we DO find life, it's going to be fundamentally different than what we're expecting it to be.

You state that as if it were a fact, rather than the opinion it actually is.
 
 

Saying conditions aren't good for life anywhere based on what we consider habitable is silly.

They aren't saying conditions are good for life based on what we consider habitable. They saying conditions are good for life based on the laws of physics and chemistry and reasonable extrapolations from the same.

The Red Planet

[StaticEngine]

Salty. Red. Once covered in liquid.

It's clear to me that Mars was once a giant Bloody Mary for the gods. It's the only explanation that fits.

I love science!

Re:Black and White Ice

[shawnce]

The take multiple images with different filters in front of the lens then create a composite of these images to generate a approx. color image.

Additionally they use color patterns on the probes body to calibrate the color generation based on the known color of the patterns (American flag, etc. on Phoenix). They need this because of the way that sun light is affected by the martian atmosphere (which can vary based on local conditions).

Re:I only hope...

[geekoid]

That would be nice, but in about 4 months it's going to be under a meter of frozen CO2.
So I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Black and White Ice

[ip_vjl]

Because other than the "gee, that's pretty" factor, a color image doesn't have as much significance as a grayscale image that has been taken through specific filters. The probe has multiple filters so they can take images that are sensitive at different wavelengths (depending on what they want to "see").

If they want a standard color image, they can take three pictures with R, G, B filters and combine them. It's not like anything they're (likely) going to take a picture of is going to move anyway, so taking 3 sequential images won't be a problem.

Grayscale images are also smaller (bandwidth-wise) so they can transmit faster. No use wasting time transmitting a larger image if your camera is pointed at the wrong thing.

Re:Finally a solution for glbal warming

[NMerriam]

United States is going to send shipments of ice from Mars to cool the warming caused by its gas guzzlers

Somehow I doubt importing billions of tons of frozen CO2 is going to help us reduce greenhouse gasses :)

If NASA Wanted Ice . . .

[hardburn]

. . . I could have given them some.

Re:I only hope...

[bjkinney]

The lander actually has its own twitter page being written in the first person. Even it doesn't expect to last the winter. From http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

"Martian winter will be tough. I don't think I will survive it, but if I wake up in Spring, I have a "Lazurus" mode and will phone home!" 10:29 PM May 26, 2008

Re:Lets get our priorities straight!

[foniksonik]

If attitudes like yours were more prevalent during the rest of human history we wouldn't have any of these problems... and we may never have gotten out of our caves... progress needs risk takers even if the risk is only that we are using resources to explore something rather than ensuring the security of what we already have... don't be such a luddite.

Might have found ice?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Before the lander even took off, we all knew it might find ice. Now it's landed there's a press release saying it might have found ice. Is there any news content here? Maybe what's different is that previously we knew it might have found something that might be ice, but now it's definitely found something that might be ice. But previously we also knew it might have found something that was definitely ice. Might be definitely, definitely might be? Please, someone wake me when it's definitely definite.

Re:Lets get our priorities straight!

[Brett Buck]

"A lot of *people pretending to be intelligent* believe that humanity + earth is a lot cause. "

        There, fixed that for you!

          Brett

Re:"Most known forms of life"?

[alexborges]

Being a PolSci graduate does not make you a politician.

It makes you, very probably, a pothead, a great guy to converse with.... and a somewhat disturbing character since youre posting on slashdot.

Now "saying blatant things about science without knowing anything you talk about", THAT makes you a politician.

Re:Lets get our priorities straight!

[GreggBz]

instead of this pointless intellectual drivel.

..how stunningly short sited.

NASA is the catalyst behind much of the research and development in areas that might help solve this problem you are so worried about.

Fuel Cells, Solar Technology, and a better understanding of the Sun and it's fission come to mind.

Planetary geology, atmospheric science, agriculture (thanks for the weather satellites and accurate maps of the Earth guys) gee I could go on.. all these things are directly beneficial to humanity and the quest of sustaining our existence on this planet.

I just can't fathom how anyone thinks planetary science and exploring space is pointless intellectual drivel. Wow.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the first successful landing that used retrorockets since the Vikings (IIRC) in the 70s. All other retrorocket-based landings have failed. The rovers used airbags.

Disturbed by the landing?

[bchernicoff]

The camera has already seen what may be ice, which was exposed when the soil was disturbed by the landing.

I have been wondering about this. I'm sure NASA would have taken into consideration that the retro rockets firing as it landed might melt ice and/or destroy signs of life. Right?

Re:Disturbed by the landing?

[Brett Buck]

Yes. The chances of destroying life that can withstand extremely high radiation levels, a virtual vacuum, and living in frozen C02 is unlikely to be bothered by a little bit of ammonia steam for a few seconds. Additionally the design intentionally spreads the plume over a wide area to lower the local heating, pressure, or contamination effects. Melting ice isn't likely given the small heat input and short duration, but it's not clear that melting a little bit of ice for a few seconds before it refreezes actually hurts anything much.

              Brett

Re:Disturbed by the landing?

[DerekLyons]

The camera has already seen what may be ice, which was exposed when the soil was disturbed by the landing.

I have been wondering about this. I'm sure NASA would have taken into consideration that the retro rockets firing as it landed might melt ice and/or destroy signs of life. Right?

Yes. The retrorockets are designed to produce minimal contamination and/or disturbance. (And they shut off a couple of meters above the ground to further reduce the effects.) The arm is designed to dig down well below the expected penetration level of any contamination or disturbance.

Re:How is this news?

[Vectronic]

Oh they are well aware of Opportunity, but dont have much Spirit, and even less Soul.

Re:I only hope...

[earthbound kid]

I have no idea why they write it in the first person like that. It's freaking creepy.

Re:I only hope...

[flydude18]

It'll only get worse.

"Ice is up to my solar panels now. So cold... so cold... Why haven't they come for me yet? They said they would. They promised. I know they will, I just need to hold out... a little... longer..."

Re:How is this news?

[TapeCutter]

WA is just jealous because Mars gets more tourists than it does.