[echocassidyde]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7644125.stm

The Phoenix spacecraft on Mars has detected snow above its landing site.
The US robot used its lidar instrument to probe the structure of clouds and saw large water ice-crystals falling through the Martian "air".
The instrument, which works by scattering pulses of laser light off particles in the sky, did not follow the snow to the ground.
The data suggests the snow vaporised before it reached the surface - but Phoenix is monitoring the situation.
"We're going to be watching very closely over the next month for evidence that the snow is actually landing on the surface," said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix.
"This is a very important factor in the hydrological cycle on Mars with the exchange of water between the surface and the atmosphere."
Changing seasons
Phoenix touched down successfully on Mars' northern plains on 25 May this year.
The static lander carries a number of instruments to study the geochemistry and environment of the Martian "Arctic".

Its weather station continuously monitors the temperature, pressure and wind around the robot.
The station has detailed the rise in temperatures as the summer season has taken hold; and seen the temperatures begin to fall again as the Sun dips below the horizon for increasing periods of time with the onset of winter.
"Over the first two months of the mission, the humidity of the atmosphere was increasing as water [ice] sublimated from the ground and the polar ice cap; and over the second half of the mission we've started to see frost, ground fog and clouds. And this is now occurring every night," explained Dr Whiteway.
Standing water?
Other key results released this week by the US space agency (Nasa) include the identification in the soil around Phoenix of calcium carbonate, which on Earth is a chief component of limestone rock.
Phoenix has also detected sheet-like particles which are probably clays of some kind.
The significance of both minerals is that they form only in the presence of liquid water.

Orbiters have identified such minerals in other parts of Mars, but only in areas where there is clear evidence of flowing water. The difference with the Phoenix landing site is that it is an open plain with no obvious geological features that have been cut by running water.
"Assuming we really do need liquid water to form these carbonates - which appears to be the case - then what this says is that we might have had standing water at some point in the past," speculated Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona and the lead scientist on the Tega instrument.
"It's possible that the ice that is there [just below the surface] has melted in-situ and stayed right in that spot and the reaction happened there."
Cold death
Phoenix's original mission was set to last just 90 Martian days, but this has now been extended indefinitely - not that engineers expect the spacecraft to live for much longer.
The Arctic Sun now spends four hours a day below the horizon, and the lander is getting less power into its batteries and is having to expend more energy on heating its systems.
The nights will gradually get longer until, in April next year, the Sun will stay below the horizon for three months.
The ability of Phoenix to gather sunlight is also expected to be severely compromised by the settling of carbon dioxide frost on its solar panels.
On current projections, the robot will probably go silent at the end of November or in early December.
"We're trying to... make hay as the Sun shines and get the most out of the instruments in these last few days before the end of the mission," said Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"As the ice builds up on the solar arrays, we may see the solar arrays crack, if not fall off. We're going to go through a glassification temperature where the material around the circuit boards gets so brittle that it turns into a glass-like material and actually cracks."
The temperature at winter solstice will be at least -120C (-184F) and perhaps even colder. Wow. Some of the information coming from the Mars vehicles in the last few months has been very exciting. It seems like a lot of the things happening on Mars show that it might at one time have been possible for water based organic life forms to have existed there long ago. This stuff is really interesting to read and think about. [thumbup]

[Edisesyethisp]

Yay, this means I will be at work day-dreaming about this instead of actully administrating a network!!


Snow on mars - there must have been some form of life on there at some point in its existance....

[GOLAGLULT]

Snow on mars - there must have been some form of life on there at some point in its existance....

Haven't they already confirmed microscopic life was on Mars?

[lalffibra]

Haven't they already confirmed microscopic life was on Mars?

They thought they had, but it turns out it probably isn't.

[echocassidyde]

Haven't they already confirmed microscopic life was on Mars?

It was determined by 99% of the scientific community to be not real.

[byncnombmub]

In the end it the living micro thingy was caused by someone not washing their hands after wiping their bum.

[Cuccuccaltefe]

if there is life on Mars, it certainly won't be found by scooping a bit of dirt on the surface, they'll need to dig much deeper.

[Raj_Copi_Jin]

Don't forget to start the reactor!

Seems like a good find !

[Desflahd]

if there is life on Mars, it certainly won't be found by scooping a bit of dirt on the surface, they'll need to dig much deeper.

Scooping dirt on the surface is not designed to find life directly, but rather the establish the chemical composition of the Mars surface and immediate subsurface to see if was possible for the planet to support, or have supported, life.