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NASA Announces Water Found On Mars
s.bots writes "Straight from the horse's mouth, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has identified water in a soil sample. Hopefully this exciting news will boost interest in the space program and further exploration of the Martian surface." Clearly, this has long been suspected, but now Martian water's been (in the words of William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer) "touched and tasted."
Well that's such a relief, as I was convinced we were going to run out of water here soon.
Now what?
Absolutely nothing. NASA seems to move at a glacial pace. Their science experiments are all geology related. How many times have we seen the headline that water has been discovered on Mars? They discovered it with remote sensing, photography and now on a first hand (shovel) basis.
From the article "One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we've done"
Has these people ever used a shovel on earth in a wet and cold environment? Above statement implies that payload scientists really did not expect to encounter ice on Mars. As far as next steps go, they will design better shovels. No astrobiology experiments.
Now on to more frustratingly slow search for water in still other ways.
Coke-Sponsored Rover Finds Evidence Of Dasani On Mars http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30505 Is it scary, that, upon reading this article, all I could think of was this Onion article, published in 2004?