Phoenix lander tastes its first ice

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 4 days (www.nature.com)

After a month of difficulty, the Mars Phoenix spacecraft is back in the baked goods business — and even got to put a little icing on top.

On Thursday, mission scientists announced they had managed to scrape some Martian soil up and sprinkle it inside one of the spacecraft’s eight ovens — where they discovered that a tiny bit of ice had tagged along with the soil. It’s the first ice actually sampled by the mission after weeks of fruitless attempts to get more pure ice in the ovens.

A panorama of the Phoenix landing site reveals its dusty environs (NASA/JPL-Caltech/U. Arizona/Texas A&M)

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Rain on the Martian Plain?

sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 4 days (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Martian soil data collected by five robotic missions indicates that rain fell on the Red Planet billions of years ago. The findings provide no new insight into the possibility of martian life, but they do suggest that further clues to Mars's past could be found right here on Earth.

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Mars OK for Life, So Far

sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 1 week (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

The first chemical lab results beamed back from the Phoenix lander in the deathly cold martian arctic show that life could get along just fine there, given a bit of liquid water. But there's still no evidence that organisms could have populated the area in the past.

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Mars soil capable of sustaining plant life

sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 1 week (www.latimes.com)

Surprisingly alkaline, the soil on Mars it could support green beans and asparagus, say Phoenix mission scientists, who are "flabbergasted" by the findings.

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Phoenix team struggling to collect Martian soil