Mars Soil Appears To Be Able To Sustain Life

beckerist writes "Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander's instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft's robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected. Sam Kounaves, the lead investigator for the wet chemistry laboratory on Phoenix, told journalists: 'It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard, you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well. ... It is very exciting for us.'"

Comments

The Soil, Maybe, But What About the Environment?

[Azuma Hazuki]

Has everyone forgotten Mars has no ozone layer? The soil may contain the necessary minerals and other nutrients, but it's baked under UV rays and (last I heard) full of peroxides and other unfriendly chemicals as a result. Starting with plants is putting the cart before the horse; we should be thinking about extremophiles if we're serious about this. And would it be ethical?

Re:Growing Asparagus on Mars...

[drinkypoo]

You know, I see people say this kind of thing all the time, but I have never seen any kind of statement about how fast Mars will lose its atmosphere, except in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy where it is asserted that the rate of loss is actually quite slow. The only one of your links which actually addresses the rate is Wikipedia: "It is generally thought that Mars could once have had an environment relatively similar to today's Earth, during an early stage in its development. This similarity is predominantly associated with the thickness of the atmosphere and abundance of water, both considered to have been lost over the course of hundreds of millions of years. The exact mechanisms which resulted in this change are still unclear, though several mechanisms have been proposed." Uh, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement of your view. So, can you provide a reference for the speed at which Mars is supposed to lose a human-breathable atmosphere?