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."

Comments

Water? Big Deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Call me if they find crude oil on Mars.

Hurray!

[inotocracy]

Now what?

Re:Hurray!

[Penguinisto]

...now we find a way to launch approximately 40bn gallons of fine single-malt whisky to Mars.

Oh, okay, - it really means that now we don't have to drag as much stuff with us when we finally do get sufficient testicular fortitude to get people out to Mars for exploration, perhaps settlement, etc etc.

Now to answer your question specifically? We need to know how much H2O are we talking here, and in what concentrations and distributions.

/P

Re:Hurray!

[Eudial]

Now what?

Now we move to mars. Naturally, we won't actually use or drink the readily available Martian water, but buy bottled water from earth instead.

Big deal...

[Atreju]

NASA found water on Mars over three years ago.

"So what?"

[damburger]

...is what most people will think. Whilst this is of earth-shattering (well, mars-shattering) importance to a lot a scientists it isn't going to motivate Joe Public to commit any more tax money to the exploration of space, because they don't benefit from it themselves. This isn't a condition of human nature, this is a conscious choice by a significant portion of the population to never grow out of adolescent self obsession. People are told its good to be totally egotistical, and here is a product that will help you do that.

So no, it won't boost interest in space exploration; everyone who will raise an eyebrow to this news is already interested in space. People who didn't care before now won't care now.

Re:"So what?"

[Phairdon]

It's unfortunate that Joe Public is such an idiot. Yes, he doesn't benefit directly from space exploration, but he has many indirect benefits.

You have to be seriously ignorant to not see the benefit of the space program.

Ever used a cordless power tool? A smoke detector? Modern water filtration? Infrared thermometer? Edible toothpaste (this one is now used for baby toothpaste and we probably all used it as babies)? Composite forceps in the delivery room? Global communications?

Here is a kid friendly site that Joe Public might be able to comprehend
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html

Re:"So what?"

[Turiacus]

I'm sick of these constant attacks on "Joe Sixpack". When was the last time you were consulted on NASA's budget ? Ordinary folks have no control over this.

And what did you personally do to encourage congress to spend more of space exploration ? Probably nothing. (whining on slashdot doesn't count).

I also disagree with the idea that nobody cares. I care, and I bet a lot of people here care too. I remember the record number of visitors pathfinder's website had at the time. You are certainly not alone in finding a robot driving around Mars more exciting than a bunch of guys bicycling in orbit. But I guess having a superiority complex is fun.

Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MTV ?

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

This will be remembered in the textbooks as one of the biggest discoveries in human history - and yet it will of course be presently overlooked by uninterested masses.

Will humanity ever get past our predilections with ourselves?

I can't fathom the significance of this event fully, and yet the public applause so well deserved is again, starkly absent.

oh well - I think it's great at least, maybe I shouldn't care so much what the masses think or care about.

Re:Measurements on a human level

[SlashDev]

Wasted tax dollars? I'm sure tax dollars are wasted on many idiotic programs than the geological survey of Mars. Space exploration is so important to understanding how the universe was formed, which in turn makes us understand how the earth was formed, which in turn makes us predict many events.

suspected? are you kidding?

[speedtux]

The Viking landers observed frost in the 70's. Mars obiters found huge amounts of water underground. Ice is clearly exposed in many photographs. Knowledge of ice and water on Mars goes way, way beyond "suspected". If detecting ice is all this mission yields, it's a big waste of money. This mission was intended to give detailed information about what's in the ice and soil, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

The question for the last decade or two has been whether there is liquid water on Mars. Despite the low air pressure, even pure liquid water can exist in some places and times: aquifers, briny puddles and lakes, lakes enclosed in ice, etc.

Sort of, but not really

[iamlucky13]

Overall, we're not surprised. Scientists have been pretty sure there was subsurface ice there for several years based on ground-penetrating radar on one of the orbiters. Confirming this was a major goal of Phoenix. There weren't a lot of other good explanations for all that hydrogen detected by radar, but that still wasn't considered proof. Nor even were the images of the bright, ice-like material uncovered earlier in the Phoenix mission. Also, we already knew for quite a while about water vapor on Mars, but the next question was about large quantities of surface water.

The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.

Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.