Dust blasted away by Phoenix reveals ice

[teago]

Don't know if anybody saw this yet, there aren't any posts on the Space news forum yet, so here you go.

That's a picture of subsurface ice revealed by the pressure of the Phoenix's retrorockets--or at least the scientists are 98.5% sure its ice. Although the ice in this picture is inaccessible by the sampler arm, it gives scientists hope that the ice that can be sampled is not too deep under the martian soil.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0601marsice0601.html

 

[razgriz31m]

interesting,

 

[TSPenguin]

indeed

 

[Andy44]

Looks like the ice in the Vallis Dao scenery. Wonder if it contains the same surprise...

Interesting to see how shiny and clean the thruster nozzles are.

Now I thought this was supossed to be a permafrost environment, but that looks like a chunk of solid ice. I'm confused.

 

[Bj]

I wonder if they are mistaking it for a rock, if ice was only that low under the surface they would have found it before.

 

[Mafuskas]

Well they've also never been that far north on Mars before, successfully anyways.

 

[to be]

Anyone else read the comments under that article? :huh: They manage to be outraged by stupid comments for stupid reasons, which, in turn...

 

[tblaxland]

I wonder if they are mistaking it for a rock, if ice was only that low under the surface they would have found it before.

Between Mars Express and Mars Odyssey scientists have known that water ice was very close to the surface (especially at higher latitudes) for some time now. They have even seen it sitting on the surface in some craters. So they have already found it. The idea behind Phoenix was to go and land in one of those areas where ice was suspected to be very close to the surface and have a closer look.

 

[mrspacely]

mars + oceans + earthlike weather + catastrophic event + giant red dust cloud and debris field + 'nuclear' winter = mars' current state as a frozen dusty planet. (in my opinion of course..)

 

[Marcel]

Looks like it may have blasted away a few centimeters of soil, revealing the ice beneath and possibly melted the surface which quickly re-froze. Awesome pic! Let's see you guys model that in Orbiter!