This is pretty neat although I suppose a lot of people already suspected it.
There is water ice on Mars within reach of the Mars Phoenix Lander, NASA scientists announced Thursday.
Photographic evidence settles the debate over the nature of the white material seen in photographs sent back by the craft. As seen in lower left of this image, chunks of the ice sublimed (changed directly from solid to gas) over the course of four days, after the lander's digging exposed them.
"It must be ice," said the Phoenix Lander's lead investigator, Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice."
The confirmation that water ice exists in the area directly surrounding the lander is big and good news for the Martian mission. NASA's stated goal for the Mars Phoenix was to find exactly this -- water ice -- and then analyze it. With the latest news, the first step is accomplished. All that's left now is to get the water into the Phoenix's instruments, a task which has occasionally proven more difficult than anticipated.
Still, this is the best opportunity that humanity has ever had to analyze extraterrestrial water in any form. That had the Phoenix Lander's persona fired up.
"Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!" the Mars Phoenix Lander tweeted at about 5:15 pm.
Their suspicions about water ice beneath the surface of Mars confirmed, scientists and the world will have renewed interest in the outcome of the soil analyses currently being conducted by the lander.
The samples are being examined for traces of organic molecules, among other substances, but the lander does not have instruments that could directly detect life.
June 19, 2008 -- Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.
"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."
The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24.
Also early today, digging in a different trench, the Robotic Arm connected with a hard surface that has scientists excited about the prospect of next uncovering an icy layer.
The Phoenix science team spent Thursday analyzing new images and data successfully returned from the lander earlier in the day.
Studying the initial findings from the new "Snow White 2" trench, located to the right of "Snow White 1," Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm, said, "We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench."
On Sol 24, Phoenix extended the first trench in the middle of a polygon at the "Wonderland" site. While digging, the Robotic Arm came upon a firm layer, and after three attempts to dig further, the arm went into a holding position. Such an action is expected when the Robotic Arm comes upon a hard surface.
Meanwhile, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is preparing a software patch to send to Phoenix in a few days so scientific data can again be saved onboard overnight when needed. Because of a large amount a duplicative file-maintenance data generated by the spacecraft Tuesday, the team is taking the precaution of not storing science data in Phoenix's flash memory, and instead downlinking it at the end of every day, until the conditions that produced those duplicative data files are corrected.
"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Our three-month schedule has 30 days of margin for contingencies like this, and we have used only one contingency day out of 24 sols. The mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success."
It's a conspiracy. There is no probe on Mars, NASA is just going to "discover" life on Mars so that we are slowly introduced to the idea of aliens controlling Earth. The probe will discover an "ancient civilization" on Mars not long from now, and then we'll get Project Bluebeam and
Quoted verbatim.
On a more serious note...I suspected as much from Day 1, when the photograph showed patches of ice below the lander. This is just an awesome piece of information, one of the Holy Grails people have been searching for.
I wonder just how much water there is on Mars, though.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Well if they just find on the place where they land, wouldnt that imply there might be a lot of it?
(Even if they did aim for a region that was likely to contain water.)
PeZook wrote:It's a conspiracy. There is no probe on Mars, NASA is just going to "discover" life on Mars so that we are slowly introduced to the idea of aliens controlling Earth. The probe will discover an "ancient civilization" on Mars not long from now, and then we'll get Project Bluebeam and
I know that a lot of the lighter gases managed to escape Mars' atmosphere. Hypothetically, if a terraforming project ever got underway, would that be a problem for water?
Fragment of the Lord of Nightmares, release thy heavenly retribution. Blade of cold, black nothingness: become my power, become my body. Together, let us walk the path of destruction and smash even the souls of the Gods! RAGNA BLADE!
Lore Monkey | the Pichu-master™
Secularism—since AD 80
Av: Elika; Prince of Persia
weemadando wrote:The pictures are crazy. It looks like the ice is just there - a layer of it just under (as in an inch or so) under the goddamn dust.
To say that this story makes me have a geek-gasm is a massive understatement.
And it's been sitting there since before our ancestors learned to smash things with bones...right there, for us to find it.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
I know that a lot of the lighter gases managed to escape Mars' atmosphere. Hypothetically, if a terraforming project ever got underway, would that be a problem for water?
Yes, but the rate of water loss is insignificant over the timescale of possible human habitation on the planet. In fact, present rates of gas loss from the atmosphere are not enough to explain why the Martian atmosphere is so thin, if one assumes that it was much thicker billions of years ago.
I know that a lot of the lighter gases managed to escape Mars' atmosphere. Hypothetically, if a terraforming project ever got underway, would that be a problem for water?
If a terraforming project ever got underway, it would probably be [At least] after we developed methods of moving MOONS to drop them on it as a way to increase the potentially unhealthily low Martian gravity...or something...
I know that a lot of the lighter gases managed to escape Mars' atmosphere. Hypothetically, if a terraforming project ever got underway, would that be a problem for water?
If a terraforming project ever got underway, it would probably be [At least] after we developed methods of moving MOONS to drop them on it as a way to increase the potentially unhealthily low Martian gravity...or something...
This is just stupid. You'd practically have to drop the entire asteroid belt onto Mars in order to boost its mass enough to provide roughly Earthlike gravity.
I was aiming for at least habitally healthy levels, assuming it's current gravity turns out to be as bad as Lunar gravity when it comes to health, of course then there's the whole issue of spending your life at that gravity and it's effects even if it won't kill you. I was just using "moon" because one of them is going to eventually fall out of it's orbit and to highlight a significant problem with Martian colonization.
Commander 598 wrote:I was aiming for at least habitally healthy levels, assuming it's current gravity turns out to be as bad as Lunar gravity when it comes to health, of course then there's the whole issue of spending your life at that gravity and it's effects even if it won't kill you.
Its surface gravity is nearly 4/10ths that of Earth. This is hardly an insurmountable health challenge (though humans who are born native to Mars will find Earth's gravity as brutally oppressive as we would Jupiter's, were there somewhere on Jupiter to attempt standing.) It's significantly better than microgravity. Of course, you could avoid those problems simply by building space habitats which you'd spin up to simulate whatever surface gravity you desired.
I was just using "moon" because one of them is going to eventually fall out of it's orbit and to highlight a significant problem with Martian colonization.
Phobos won't drop out of orbit for another 50,000 years, at least. And it's merely a captured asteroid. Moving it to a higher orbit (or dropping it down onto the planet early) will be a trivial engineering problem. The significant problem with Martian colonization is the fact that it'd be a huge waste of money for virtually no return. Converting the Earth-crossing asteroids into space colonies would provide a much greater return on investment, and would be much faster than attempting to engineer a planet-wide ecosystem from scratch, just to trap a whole bunch of people at the bottom of a deep gravity well.
GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:
Its surface gravity is nearly 4/10ths that of Earth. This is hardly an insurmountable health challenge (though humans who are born native to Mars will find Earth's gravity as brutally oppressive as we would Jupiter's, were there somewhere on Jupiter to attempt standing.) It's significantly better than microgravity. Of course, you could avoid those problems simply by building space habitats which you'd spin up to simulate whatever surface gravity you desired.
Indeed, I would imagine martian living environs to have "G rooms" for people to sleep or work in that simulate terran gravity by spinning. This, combined w/ vitamin supplements for bone deficiencies could handle difficulties of .4g living quite nicely.
PRFYNAFBTFCP
Captain of the MFS Frigate of Pizazz +2 vs. Douchebags - Est vicis pro nonnullus suscito vir
"Are you an idiot? What demand do you think there is for aircraft carriers that aren't government?" - Captain Chewbacca
"I keep my eighteen wives in wonderfully appointed villas by bringing the underwear of god to the heathens. They will come to know God through well protected goodies." - Gandalf
"There is no such thing as being too righteous to understand." - Darth Wong
weemadando wrote:The pictures are crazy. It looks like the ice is just there - a layer of it just under (as in an inch or so) under the goddamn dust.
To say that this story makes me have a geek-gasm is a massive understatement.
And it's been sitting there since before our ancestors learned to smash things with bones...right there, for us to find it.
Fortunately the discovery waited until we were sufficiently advanced and civilized, that we now smash things with high explosives...
...I'm really surprised that the lander didn't apparently carry any instruments that could have quickly established the ice-fulness of the find. They had to wait to see how it sublimated?
I find myself endlessly fascinated by your career - Stark, in a fit of Nerd-Validation, November 3, 2011
weemadando wrote:The pictures are crazy. It looks like the ice is just there - a layer of it just under (as in an inch or so) under the goddamn dust.
To say that this story makes me have a geek-gasm is a massive understatement.
And it's been sitting there since before our ancestors learned to smash things with bones...right there, for us to find it.
Fortunately the discovery waited until we were sufficiently advanced and civilized, that we now smash things with high explosives...
...I'm really surprised that the lander didn't apparently carry any instruments that could have quickly established the ice-fulness of the find. They had to wait to see how it sublimated?
Phoenix actually has an instrument that would very readily determine the presence of water in Martian soil. TEGA or the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer bakes soil samples and analyzes the resultant gases.
The problem was that the first sample of soil delivered to the instrument was too coarse to fit through the filter screen. So it took a couple days of patient vibrating to fill the first oven . . . by which time, any ice that was in the sample would've sublimated away.
Beyond that, time-lapse photography really is a good way to demonstrate the presence of water-ice in the Martian soil, as the surface atmospheric pressure is so low on Mars that water-ice sublimates directly into gas, like CO2 ice does on Earth.
Kanastrous wrote:Wouldn't laser spectroscopy of the material, right where it was sitting, have determined its composition?
Mars Phoenix leverages existing instruments, and a laser spectrometer wasn't among them. However, the Mars Science Laboratory rover that's being launched next year will carry a tunable laser spectrometer.
Commander 598 wrote:I was aiming for at least habitally healthy levels, assuming it's current gravity turns out to be as bad as Lunar gravity when it comes to health, of course then there's the whole issue of spending your life at that gravity and it's effects even if it won't kill you.
Its surface gravity is nearly 4/10ths that of Earth. This is hardly an insurmountable health challenge (though humans who are born native to Mars will find Earth's gravity as brutally oppressive as we would Jupiter's, were there somewhere on Jupiter to attempt standing.) It's significantly better than microgravity. Of course, you could avoid those problems simply by building space habitats which you'd spin up to simulate whatever surface gravity you desired.
I was just using "moon" because one of them is going to eventually fall out of it's orbit and to highlight a significant problem with Martian colonization.
Phobos won't drop out of orbit for another 50,000 years, at least. And it's merely a captured asteroid. Moving it to a higher orbit (or dropping it down onto the planet early) will be a trivial engineering problem. The significant problem with Martian colonization is the fact that it'd be a huge waste of money for virtually no return. Converting the Earth-crossing asteroids into space colonies would provide a much greater return on investment, and would be much faster than attempting to engineer a planet-wide ecosystem from scratch, just to trap a whole bunch of people at the bottom of a deep gravity well.
With the weak gravity, though, wouldn't any dust and debris kicked up from a "moon drop" stay in the atmosphere remain suspended for a long-ass time, and cause substantial cooling? The place doesn't get that much sun to begin with...
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
Coyote wrote:With the weak gravity, though, wouldn't any dust and debris kicked up from a "moon drop" stay in the atmosphere remain suspended for a long-ass time, and cause substantial cooling? The place doesn't get that much sun to begin with...
The place gets sufficient sunlight. And yes, Mars is fairly dusty to begin with, owing to small size of Martian dust particles. Though when it does get globe-spanning dust storms, the dust does settle down again (in timescales of months.) The dust kicked up from a large impact should settle down fairly quickly.
And, to boost Martian insolation, there's always the possibility of constructing a gigantic mirror.
Kim Stanley Robinson-style reflector? That would do the trick. And I should have said insufficient heat, you're right, there is enough sun.
Really, though, wouldn't colonization be easier/better by going into a Martian valley or crater, digging tunnels, plugging up the end and pressurizing it while running solar panels topside?
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
Look at that picture and tell me that you don't feel inspired. Ever wonder just how close we could have come to landing people on mars with all the squandered money from the WoT?
Coyote wrote:With the weak gravity, though, wouldn't any dust and debris kicked up from a "moon drop" stay in the atmosphere remain suspended for a long-ass time, and cause substantial cooling? The place doesn't get that much sun to begin with...
The same weak gravity also means the atmosphere is very thin, so it doesn’t suspend dust and debris as well as earth’s does. This will tend to make debris stay up for much less time then the years stuff would be drifting around on earth. Taken to its extreme, a world with no atmosphere at all, and dust and debris will fly perfect ballistic trajectories (excluding deflection from collisions as they go along) after being thrown up by an impact.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
PRFYNAFBTFCP
