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NASA Announces Water Found On Mars
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 31, 2008 05:24 PM
from the so-val-kilmer-can-breathe-easy dept.
from the so-val-kilmer-can-breathe-easy dept.
s.bots writes "Straight from the horse's mouth, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has identified water in a soil sample. Hopefully this exciting news will boost interest in the space program and further exploration of the Martian surface." Clearly, this has long been suspected, but now Martian water's been (in the words of William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer) "touched and tasted."
Related Stories
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Water Ice On Mars 364 comments
cathector sends along a story from SpaceWeather.com on the discovery of water ice on Mars.
"Scientists have figured out the mysterious white substance unearthed by NASA's Phoenix lander on Mars. It's frozen water. The breakthrough came last week when Phoenix's stereo camera caught the substance in the act of disappearing. Bathed in martian sunlight for four days, the white substance sublimated — i.e., it transformed from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state. This is how water behaves on Mars.... Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F." The animated GIF showing the ice sublimating is pretty nice too.
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Phoenix Mars Lander To Begin Rasping Ice Shavings 80 comments
Rob writes with an excerpt from an article at spacefellowship.com: "A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is being tested for the first time on Mars in gathering sample shavings of ice.
The lander has used its arm in recent days to clear away loose soil from a subsurface layer of hard-frozen material and create a large enough area to use the motorized rasp in a trench informally named 'Snow White.'
The Phoenix team prepared commands early Tuesday for beginning a series of tests with the rasp later in the day. Engineers and scientists designed the tests to lead up to, in coming days, delivering a sample of icy soil into one of the lander's laboratory ovens.
'While Phoenix was in development, we added the rasp to the robotic arm design specifically to grind into very hard surface ice,' said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This is the exactly the situation we find we are facing on Mars, so we believe we have the right tool for the job. Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule.'" I still can't get enough of pictures of a little hunk of metal on Mars.
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Mars Orbiter Finds Evidence For Ancient Rivers, Lakes 130 comments
Cowards Anonymous points out news that studies based on data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found that vast regions of Mars contained rivers and lakes when the planet was young. The studies also suggest that the water existed for quite some time, often in standing pools, which are conducive to the formation of basic organic matter. NASA provides a color-enhanced photo of a delta within a crater. Quoting:
"The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, preserve a record of the interaction of water with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period of Mars' history, approximately 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This period corresponds to the earliest years of the solar system, when Earth, the moon and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and asteroids. Rocks of this age have largely been destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics. They are preserved on the moon, but were never exposed to liquid water. The phyllosilicate-containing rocks on Mars preserve a unique record of liquid water environments possibly suitable for life in the early solar system."
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Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Funny)
Meh. Call me if they find crude oil on Mars.
Re:Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Water? Big Deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but that's one gawdawful pipeline you gotta build to get at it, dontcha think?
(...and I don't even want to know how what's gonna happen once the Sierra Club crowd finds out...)
(yes, I'm being facetious).
Parent
Hurray! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
...now we find a way to launch approximately 40bn gallons of fine single-malt whisky to Mars.
Oh, okay, - it really means that now we don't have to drag as much stuff with us when we finally do get sufficient testicular fortitude to get people out to Mars for exploration, perhaps settlement, etc etc.
Now to answer your question specifically? We need to know how much H2O are we talking here, and in what concentrations and distributions.
Parent
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Now what?
Now we move to mars. Naturally, we won't actually use or drink the readily available Martian water, but buy bottled water from earth instead.
Parent
Big deal... (Score:5, Funny)
Are we surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Are we surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously are we really that surprised we found water on Mars? Considering most of our galaxy is made up of the same compounds here on Earth, I wouldn't doubt if we found water on nearly all our planets, in one form or another.
from our perspective here on earth we might seem to have an overabundance of water, but on a universal scale it's a fairly rare compound. After all, water can only exist in a limited number of states under a limited number of conditions.
Parent
Re:Are we surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary: I'd guess that water is the most common compound in the Universe.
The most abundant substance in the by far in the visible Universe is hydrogen. The second most abundant is helium. The third most abundant element in the Universe is oxygen, but in the presence of elemental hydrogen oxygen is unstable and reacts exothermically to produce water. Probably most of the oxygen not locked up inside stars is in water molecules.
Liquid water is rare, I'll grant. But the Universe is absolutely riddled with water vapour and with ice.
Parent
Sort of, but not really (Score:5, Informative)
The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.
Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.
Parent
Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
I still can't believe we sent a small robot and let it run around on *Mars*. It seems so unfathomably far away that I find it hard to even imagine...
Next stop: Bacteria.
Re:Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
For very low values of "running".
The rover has a top speed on flat hard ground of 5 centimeters (2 inches) per second [nasa.gov].
Which is approximately 0.1 miles per hour.
Parent
Re:Mars... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you kidding? That's sprinting for most slashdotters.
Parent
Re:Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
You are confusing the roman catholic church with your run-off-the-mill protestant crackpot from the US. The roman catholic church has stated numerous times that they see no conflict between either extraterrestrial life or evolution and the church. E.g.,
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12628 [catholicnewsagency.com]
Parent
"So what?" (Score:5, Insightful)
...is what most people will think. Whilst this is of earth-shattering (well, mars-shattering) importance to a lot a scientists it isn't going to motivate Joe Public to commit any more tax money to the exploration of space, because they don't benefit from it themselves. This isn't a condition of human nature, this is a conscious choice by a significant portion of the population to never grow out of adolescent self obsession. People are told its good to be totally egotistical, and here is a product that will help you do that.
So no, it won't boost interest in space exploration; everyone who will raise an eyebrow to this news is already interested in space. People who didn't care before now won't care now.
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Informative)
It's unfortunate that Joe Public is such an idiot. Yes, he doesn't benefit directly from space exploration, but he has many indirect benefits.
You have to be seriously ignorant to not see the benefit of the space program.
Ever used a cordless power tool? A smoke detector? Modern water filtration? Infrared thermometer? Edible toothpaste (this one is now used for baby toothpaste and we probably all used it as babies)? Composite forceps in the delivery room? Global communications?
Here is a kid friendly site that Joe Public might be able to comprehend
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html [nasa.gov]
Parent
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Funny)
...
FWIW, I think if Joe Public has used composite forceps in the delivery room, we have larger problems than NASA funding. For one, we need to fix the healthcare system so that when my wife delivers her next child, it's an obstetrician, not Joe Public, prying the little rugrat out of her dilated vagoogoo.
(My apologies to my as-yet-unconceived (I hope) second child).
Parent
Re:"So what?" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of these constant attacks on "Joe Sixpack". When was the last time you were consulted on NASA's budget ? Ordinary folks have no control over this.
And what did you personally do to encourage congress to spend more of space exploration ? Probably nothing. (whining on slashdot doesn't count).
I also disagree with the idea that nobody cares. I care, and I bet a lot of people here care too. I remember the record number of visitors pathfinder's website had at the time. You are certainly not alone in finding a robot driving around Mars more exciting than a bunch of guys bicycling in orbit. But I guess having a superiority complex is fun.
Parent
Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MTV ? (Score:5, Insightful)
This will be remembered in the textbooks as one of the biggest discoveries in human history - and yet it will of course be presently overlooked by uninterested masses.
Will humanity ever get past our predilections with ourselves?
I can't fathom the significance of this event fully, and yet the public applause so well deserved is again, starkly absent.
oh well - I think it's great at least, maybe I shouldn't care so much what the masses think or care about.
Re:Amazing! Unprecidented!...I wonder what's on MT (Score:5, Insightful)
No it won't, because water is a fairly common molecular arrangement. Electricty, atomic power, Earth being round, these are things that qualify as the biggest discoveries. In 10 years this particular incident of the rover will be forgotten, and in 100 years, the rover itself will be a historical footnote. How much do textbooks cover the Apollo program other than #11 and #13?
Less than 100 years ago, people believed that Mars had canals full of water. Then with better optics people realized that no, those trenches, causing an extreme belief swing the other way - that Mars must be bone dry, any water having long since evaporated. Of course that ignores the polar ice caps which spectrography can easily identify.
We've finally come into direct contact with H20 on Mars' surface rather than simply remote identification. While a milestone, it's a pretty damn tiny one. It will not be remembered in textbooks. Look how results of the Venus expeditions of the 70s are now glossed over.
Parent
suspected? are you kidding? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Viking landers observed frost in the 70's. Mars obiters found huge amounts of water underground. Ice is clearly exposed in many photographs. Knowledge of ice and water on Mars goes way, way beyond "suspected". If detecting ice is all this mission yields, it's a big waste of money. This mission was intended to give detailed information about what's in the ice and soil, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
The question for the last decade or two has been whether there is liquid water on Mars. Despite the low air pressure, even pure liquid water can exist in some places and times: aquifers, briny puddles and lakes, lakes enclosed in ice, etc.
Re:Measurements on a human level (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:First ? (Score:5, Funny)
Many, so very many.
A bottling plant on Mars would make crazy money. "Don't drink earth water, drink E.T water!" (even more if they pluralize that and convince people alien urine will give them super health).
And then the Mars [mars.com] company will give everyone hell for calling it Mars Water.
Mod parent Insightful, and mod me drunk troll!
Parent