It’s an intriguing sight: Three photos, played in sequence, showing what looks very much like water beading up on one leg of the Mars Phoenix Lander, which arrived on Mars last May 25 after a nine-month trip through space. Of the many Mars probe missions in recent history, this was the first to successfully land in a polar region.
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Droplets on a leg of the Mars Phoenix lander are seen to darken and coalesce. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute.
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That little clip on MarsDaily.com has Mars-watchers all a-twitter over whether it is just that: water (as opposed to just ice) on the Red Planet. And the response of the scientific community: Sure looks like it.
At least, that’s the judgment of one of the co-investigators of the Phoenix mission, as reported at the San Francisco Sentinel. Nilton Reno, a professor in that school’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, says it’s most likely salt water. And it may mean Mars isn’t as dry as conventional wisdom has said it is.
“A large number of independent physical and thermodynamical evidence shows that saline water may actually be common on Mars,” Reno told the Sentinel. “Liquid water is an essential ingredient for life. This discovery has important implications to many areas of planetary exploration, including the habitability of Mars.”
According to the report on MarsDaily.com, “The lander was guided down by rockets whose exhaust melted the top layer of ice below a thin sheet of soil.”
MarsDaily.com said that Reno’s research was presented March 23 at a conference in Houston, and that a paper written by Reno and many Phoenix mission colleagues is under review for possible publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research.