Well, looks like the Phoenix Mars Lander finally got some of that damned dirt to go into an oven for processing.
Geez. Ya never know what’s gonna jump out at you and bite your balls…
Meanwhile - those white blotches have just got to be water-ice! They will eventually melt some and get it under a microscope and scan it.
Will they see signs of life?
Um…I didn’t go get some smut. Go look at some nice photos at Last Of The Few.
Tags: bollocks
June 12, 2008 at 3:16 pm
No smut? Did you run out? Gosh, I could lend you some, you know, just to tide you over.
June 12, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Naaa - I was just being lazy.
June 12, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Oh. Oh well. I got a post out of it anyway!
June 12, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Being a very low atmospheric pressure relative to Earth, it seems to me that water will sublimate easily and refreeze evenly on all surfaces.
(and this is an honest question)
Is there any reason to believe or mechanism such that you might actually find chunks of ice on the surface?
June 12, 2008 at 5:48 pm
It will tend to sublimate - but the atmospheric burden of moisture (water load) is quite low for the reason you give - low barometric pressure.
So it has to settle somewhere - like at the poles. hence the Phoenix Lander location! The suspicions right now are that the Lander is sitting on a sheet of the stuff. it’s only coated with a thin layer (a few inches) of dirt.
The dirt up there at the pole is all dust that was windblown up there (how else would it get there?) from the famous Martian dust storms. Its really, really fine dust. That’s why they’re having so much trouble with the dirt going through the sifters. The fine dust got moist and stuck together into clumps that are bigger’n they figured.
* All IMHO from my readings and misremembering. *
June 12, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Ah… so the short answer is yes, there could be chunks of ice if the condensate layer was allowed to get thick enough.
It maketh sense, Master.
June 13, 2008 at 6:45 am
We’ll find out pretty soon.
That lander is on a roughly ninety-day fuse before it freezes its ass off and dies horribly. They do not expect it to survive for 10x its mission expectancy like the Mars Rovers have done. Like Earths poles, the Martian poles get bitterly cold. Way colder’n the equator, I guess.
Yeah - they think the pole ice is sheets of sublimated water-ice layered with dust and dirt. Not pristine snow-ice like here.
We’ll see!
I’d give even money there’s bacteria in that soil or ice or both. If there’s one thing extremophile life here on Earth has taught us: Life is tenacious.