Successful New Landing on Mars

They have overwhelming evidence that Mars used to be inhabited, megalithic structures, pyramids, villages and other inhabited places, ancient mechanical debris strewn across the sand, and NASA, which can't deal with the implications of all that to several of their basic theories, wants to land probes on the poles and look for water or microbes...

Phoenix Returns Treasure Trove For Science

June 26, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry experiment on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.

"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."

"This is the first wet-chemical analysis ever done on Mars or any planet, other than Earth," said Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, science lead for the wet chemistry investigation.

About 80 percent of Phoenix's first, two-day wet chemistry experiment is now complete. Phoenix has three more wet-chemistry cells for use later in the mission.

"This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica," Kouvanes said. "The alkalinity of the soil at this location is definitely striking. At this specific location, one-inch into the surface layer, the soil is very basic, with a pH of between eight and nine. We also found a variety of components of salts that we haven't had time to analyze and identify yet, but that include magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride."

"This is more evidence for water because salts are there. We also found a reasonable number of nutrients, or chemicals needed by life as we know it," Kounaves said. "Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."

"The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," said Scott Murchie, CRISM's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, suggest water interacted with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period on Mars, about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.

"In most locations the rocks are lightly altered by liquid water, but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil," Mustard said.

Another study, published in Nature Geosciences, found that the wet conditions persisted for a long time. It found evidence of river channels forming a delta where the river emptied into a crater lake.

"The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years," said Brown University's Bethany Ehlmann.

"Clays are wonderful at trapping and preserving organic matter, so if life ever existed in this region, there's a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta." (Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Vicki Allen)

Mars had the water. But, were conditions right for a long enough period of time for the evolutionary process to proceed?

Does Mars have a magnetic field sufficient to deflect most cosmic radiation?

"Finding organics would really change our way of thinking," Boynton said.

But so far, organic molecules haven't shown up on Mars.