Posted on 06/19/2008 6:53:14 PM PDT by LibWhacker
TUCSON, Ariz. – 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."
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
And doped up at the best of times!
“I wonder why they are not thinking it could be dry ice. With so much CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Your question just raised a question for me. If CO2 is present in large quantities in Earths Atmosphere, and the atmosphere is cold at the Earths Polar Regions, would we have dry ice formations on Earth instead of global warming?
Why am I thinking that "White stuff that dissappears" is less than perfect evidence?
These images were acquired by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on the 21st and 25th days of the mission, or Sols 20 and 24 (June 15 and 18, 2008). They show sublimation of ice in the trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" over the course of four days. In the lower left corner, lumps disappear, similar to the process of evaporation. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
If posters on Slashdot are correct, it's too hot for dry ice to remain. Only a thin frost-like film can form, and only during coldest nights. In any case I'm sure NASA folks can tell a difference between water ice and dry ice (and if not, we are in trouble.)
In a moonbats mind on capitol hill, a democrat moonbat. :)
I was a passenger out of Dulles one January day. I had a window seat and looked at the wing. The area of the fuel tanks on the wing were a sheet of ice. We pushed back and started taxing out. I was most upset. I asked the stewardess about the ice on the wing. She informed me that this is normal. This was moments before we came to the deicing area. I then felt much better. I had every intention of getting off that plane.
Yawn. I can see seasonal polar ice on Mars using my backyard telescope. Now finding some form of life would be a big deal.
So why’d they have to dig a trench to see this? Why isn’t ice sublimating from all around the trench too?
Why not CO2 permafrost, protected by the soil? I don’t understand how water ice would sublimate so quickly at those temperatures. I guess they would say solar radiation, but in my earth experience, that takes several days, even at earth temperatures.
I wonder that too. Frozen CO2 is white and evaporates readily.
It could well be colder under the surface.
It was probably styrofoam that blew in from Earth, and it blew away when it was uncovered. That stuff goes everywhere!
Mars is the new Earth...
Hmmm, this is interesting: Therefore, there must be a much larger unidentified CO2 reservoir in the martian subsurface, possibly adsorbed CO2 in the regolith [9,10], to buffer the much larger atmosphere, or it means the total budget of CO2 is present in the atmosphere, and that Mars has today much less CO2 than other telluric planets.
I suppose the Mars people are right, just because they're the experts, but honestly I don't entirely trust them.
Don’t forget lower pressure as well.
Dude! what kind of telescope?
I have gotten one for my kids and they seem to enjoy it
I dont think I could see mars THAT clearly with it though
Well, it's a lot colder out there, and processes such as sublimation tend to have an exponential dependence on temperature. Here's a very pertinent paper, SUBLIMATION OF WATER FROM THE NORTH POLAR CAP ON MARS. They mention sublimation rates of 5cm per year from south-facing cliff scarps. This happens over a summer season, but that's still, what? 200 days? Say 50 times 4 days, so we come up with 0.1 mm for a 4 day period with this figure ... so I don't know.
Oops! 1.0 mm in 4 days. A lot closer but still a stretch, especially with the shaded location.
I don’t know, but I would like to know if the “ice” that was imaged under the lander has changed since landing.
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