NASA shelves science, uses reasoning to discover ice on Mars

There are a lot of real happy scientists out there today after NASA announced they have officially discovered ice on Mars with their Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft. The whole purpose of the Phoenix mission was to find ice, and hopefully organic life in the ice, which NASA is one step closer to today. So just exactly how do you determine if you've discovered ice on another planet? Forget fancy experiments and tests. All you have to do is take a picture of the ground one day, then do it again four days later, and see if anything has changed. That's what NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) did when examining the silvery looking substance in the bottom of the trench dug by Phoenix's robotic arm as seen in the picture. They show more of the substance on the left photo than in the right which was taken four days later from the same trench, referred to informally as "Dodo-Goldilocks". NASA scientists believe the substance is ice that has vaporized through the process of sublimation because the stuff obviously didn't get up and walk away on its own. Cheers to you, NASA! I hope you have the same luck finding organic life on Mars , unless they turn out to be evil Martian aliens.

Photo: NASA

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Phoenix starts digging up Mars

The Phoenix Mars lander finally got its first scoop of Martian dirt yesterday. The image above was taken as a closeup of the scoop of dirt and was illuminated with LEDs. The tiny white particles are suspected to be either ice or salt. The bottom photo shows where the dirt was removed, an area referred to as "the Knave of Hearts." NASA should have Phoenix begin running tests on the dirt soon to determine composition. If only I could get one that scoops up dog poop.



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Phoenix survives shear terror of landing on Mars, NASA breathes again

Well those rocket scientists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have done it again. The Phoenix Mars Lander successfully planted itself on the surface of the Red Planet around 23:53 Zulu this evening. Nice job, guys. Next step, start diggin' up that red dirt to look for signs of ice, and ultimately, life.

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NASA gets one chance to land (or crash) Phoenix on Mars

NASA's Phoenix lander spacecraft should be touching down near the North pole of Mars in roughly 1 hour assuming it survives. After a 9 month journey to the Red Planet, it's now in the home stretch preparing for it's automated landing. Of course, it takes nearly 15 minutes to send a signal from Mars back to Earth, and the entire entry, descent and landing phase only takes 7 minutes. This means it will land (or crash) before we even know it has entered the Martian atmosphere. And this isn't one of those bouncy-bouncy landings like the Mars rovers did. This one is using a unique thruster arrangment to put her down that gives them only one shot. And did I mention the spacecraft is the driver, not a human? Anyway, good luck to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on this historic evening. I'm crossing my fingers.

P.S. Look out for evil Martians little lander guy!

WATCH THE PHOENIX MARS LANDING LIVE RIGHT HERE

We'll keep you posted here at PointNiner on the results of this landing.

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