Saturday, June 21, 2008

Ice on Mars!

The first direct evidence of water ice existing on the Red Planet has been discovered by the Phoenix lander, as reported by Clara Moskowitz on Space.com:

When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.

"It's with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other substance," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said at a briefing Friday.


Let's hope there are giant aquifers of the stuff deep underground.

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