LiveScience for June 27, 2008 discussed whether or not NASA will ever find life on Mars.
Getting to that answer will require the right mission with the right tools in the right places — not to mention some serious digging beyond the capabilities of Phoenix. The next Mars missions include NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, an SUV-sized rover set to launch in 2009, and the European ExoMars rover that would wield a drill capable of digging 6.5 feet (2 meters) down. It is set to launch in 2013.
ScienceDaily for June 27, 2008 reported on results from the first wet-chemistry test of Martian soil.
"We are awash in chemistry data," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument on Phoenix. "We're trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what's dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life."The ScienceNOW article is here. The National Geographic News article is here. The Discover article is here. The ScienceDaily article is here.
A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.
An article in Science American for June 25, 2008 reported on an impact on Mars of a large asteroid.
That feature—in which the crust thickness drops from 30 to about 10 miles (50 to 20 kilometers) over a large area that is the most visible feature on Mars—has been known to astronomers for more than 30 years and was long suspected to be due to an asteroid impact that flung most of the crust out the area.The ScienceDaily article is here. The WorldScience article is here. The NewsDaily article is here. The NationalGeographicNews article is here. The Scientific American article is here.
ScienceDaily for April 1, 2008 reported on the discovery of a new planet that is being formed.
Astrophysicists analyzing infrared images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope found indications of a dust cloud surrounding a relatively young star. The star is 10 to 16 million years old, and analysis of the dust cloud suggests that it may coalesce and become a rocky planet like earth. It is located at a distance from the star that it may build an atmosphere, collect liquid water, and perhaps, in millions and millions of years, support life.
NewsDaily for June 20, 2008 reported on evidence there is ice in Martian soil.
Small chunks of bright material described as the size of dice have disappeared from inside a trench where they were photographed by the craft earlier this week, NASA said in a statement late on Thursday.The Discover article is here. The Scientific American article is here. The ScienceNOW article is here. The NewsDaily article is here. The National Geographic News article is here. The Discover article is here.
One of the ovens on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander continued baking its first sample of Martian soil over the weekend, while the Robotic Arm dug deeper into the soil to learn more about white material first revealed on June 3.
ScienceDaily for August 17, 2008 reported on a new trench being dug in Martian soil by the Phoenix lander
The lander's Robotic Arm created the new test trench called "Snow White" on June 17, the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after the Phoenix spacecraft landed on May 25. Newly planned science activities will resume no earlier than Sol 24 as engineers look into how the spacecraft is handling larger than expected amounts of data.
"Does every single star harbor planets and, if yes, how many?" asked Michel Mayor of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory. "We may not yet know the answer but we are making huge progress towards it," Mayor said in a statement.
NASA announced today that the first soil sample baked in the Phoenix Mars Lander shows no signs of water. No surprise, considering that the crusty sample sat stubbornly on a protective screen for several days before slipping into the oven below, giving whatever ice the dirt might have contained plenty of time to sublimate away.
The delivery of scooped-up soil for inspection by the lander's Optical Microscope, a component of MECA, marks the second success in consecutive days for getting samples delivered to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck. Some soil from an earlier scoopful reached a tiny oven in another instrument on Tuesday, as confirmed in data received early Wednesday. That instrument is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. Commands being sent to Phoenix today include instructions to close TEGA oven number 4 and begin analyzing the sample inside, a process that will take several days.
A screen covers each of TEGA's eight ovens. The screen is to prevent larger bits of soil from clogging the narrow port to each oven so that fine particles fill the oven cavity, which is no wider than a pencil lead. Each TEGA chute also has a whirligig mechanism that vibrates the screen to help shake small particles through.The Scientific American article is here.
The soil's physical properties are proving to be a challenge for getting a sample intended for one instrument to pass through a screen over a delivery opening. The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Anaylzer, or TEGA, designed to bake and sniff samples to identify some key ingredients. The analyzer vibrated the screen for 20 minutes on Sunday but detected only a few particles getting through the screen, not enough to fill the tiny oven below.
The pictures were taken through an optical microscope and showed particles -- some as small as one-tenth the diameter of a human hair -- that were collected on a slide when Phoenix touched down on May 25 at the arctic circle of the Red Planet, kicking up dust from the surface.
Andrew Schuerger of the University of Florida and colleagues used a martian simulator to measure the degradation rate of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). This complex organic molecule transports chemical energy through the cells of all terrestrial organisms. It undoubtedly has found its way onto every spacecraft that has ever flown.
ScienceDaily for May 30, 2008 reported on life that is guaranteed to be in space.
"Wherever man boldly goes his microbial fauna is sure to follow," said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at University College London. The Russian space station Mir was launched in 1986 and microbial studies investigated the diversity of bacteria living alongside the astronauts. In 1998, free-floating blobs of water found during a NASA mission to the station were analyzed and discovered to contain microbes including faecal bacteria like E. coli, plague bacterium-related species of Yersinia, and even what was suspected to be Legionella, as well as fungi, amoebae and protozoa.
The practice scoop was emptied onto a designated dump area on the ground after the Robotic Arm Camera photographed the soil inside the scoop. The Phoenix team plans to have the arm deliver its next scoopful, later this week, to an instrument that heats and sniffs the sample to identify ingredients.
ScienceNOW for June 2, 2008 reported on the discovery of a small planet only 3X larger than Earth.
When it comes to planets outside our solar system, smaller is better. That's because smaller planets are more likely to resemble Earth. So the discovery of the smallest known extrasolar planet, announced today at the June meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Missouri, comes as good news. "It gives us hope of finding lots of habitable planets," says astronomer Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who was not involved in the discovery.
Mission scientists are eager to move Phoenix's robotic arm, for that arm will deliver samples of icy terrain to their instruments made to study this unexplored Martian environment.
