Pribek

The Phoenix Mars Lander has dug up some sort of white substance.

From Nasa.

“Two scoops into the soil we see there’s a white layer becoming visible in the wall of the trench,” said Carol Stoker of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., a member of the Phoenix science team.

Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith said, “We’ve had an impassioned discussion of whether that may be salts or ice or some other material even more exotic.”

Concentrations of salts can be indicators of formerly wet conditions. One goal for the Phoenix mission is to determine whether the ice beneath the surface of far-northern Mars ever thaws during long-term climate cycles.

See it there, on the upper part of the hole? Definitely a white substance.

What do you think;

Salt?

Ice?

Some other material even more exotic?

From NASA.

A NASA spacecraft today sent pictures showing itself in good condition after making the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars.

The images from NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander also provided a glimpse of the flat valley floor expected to have water-rich permafrost within reach of the lander’s robotic arm. The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to taste and sniff the northern polar site’s soil and ice.

“We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space, we don’t see ice on the surface, but we think we will see it beneath the surface. It looks great to me,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission.

The photos are stunning. Somehow different than other pictures from space that I’ve seen, maybe it looks more accessible. Makes me want to take a walk and look around the place, check out the terrain.

Phoenix carries science instruments to assess whether ice just below the surface ever thaws and whether some chemical ingredients of life are preserved in the icy soil. These are key questions in evaluating whether the environment has ever been favorable for microbial life. Phoenix will also study other aspects of the soil and atmosphere with instrument capabilities never before used on Mars. Canada supplied the lander’s weather station.