Wednesday-Night

Exploring Mars
Historic pictures sent from Mars

June 26
Martian soil appears able to support life
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - “Flabbergasted” NASA scientists said on Thursday that Martian soil appeared to contain the requirements to support life, although more work would be needed to prove it.
Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander’s instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft’s robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected.
Giant crater explains strange shape of Mars
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A giant crater made by an asteroid or comet explains why Mars is so lopsided, with a basin on one hemisphere and high terrain on the other, three separate teams of scientists said on Wednesday.
The impact gouged out a hole 5,200 miles across and 6,500 miles long — the size of the combined areas of Asia, Europe and Australia, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.
It would be the largest impact yet found in the solar system.
June 20
NASA spacecraft finds ice on Mars
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Mars Phoenix Lander has found ice on the surface of the Red Planet, triumphant NASA scientists said on Thursday, a key discovery for the spacecraft as it searches for water and signs of life on Earth’s closet planetary neighbor.
The proof came in a series of pictures sent back by Phoenix of a trench it dug with its robotic arm at the arctic circle of Mars, showing dice-sized chunks of white material that are seen to melt away over the course of several days.
Phoenix diary: Mission to Mars
Dr Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, is one of the scientists working on the mission. He has been writing a diary for the BBC News website of his experiences.
May 31
Spacecraft seems to have landed on Martian ice, scientists say
(CBC) Sharp new images received Saturday from the Phoenix lander largely convinced scientists that the spacecraft’s thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the Martian surface, team members said.
That bodes well for the mission’s main goal of digging for ice that can be tested for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
May 29
Mars lander flexes its robot arm
(BBC) Nasa’s Mars lander Phoenix has unstowed its robotic arm - the key tool in its mission to test the red planet’s soil for the building blocks of life.
The 2.35m (7.7ft)-long titanium and aluminium extension will dig below the Martian topsoil to the water-ice which is thought to lie just beneath.

2008: a Martian odyssey
The terror lasted seven minutes. This was the time it took for Nasa’s Phoenix spacecraft to slow down from a screeching 12,600mph to a sedate walking pace – its final speed when it landed safely early yesterday on the pebble-strewn surface of Mars.
During those seven minutes, the Phoenix had to endure temperatures of 1,500C as it slammed through the Martian atmosphere, before deploying its braking parachute, jettisoning a protective shell and firing the 12 small retrorockets that finally delivered the softest of landings. It was the first successful soft landing on the Red Planet for 32 years and made all the more momentous as it successfully used technology which might well, one day, allow humans to land on Mars.
The first signal from Phoenix that confirmed its safe landing on Mars took an excruciating 15 minutes and 20 seconds to travel at the speed of light the 171 million miles between Mars and its nearest neighbour, Earth.
The Phoenix has landed
THE past few days have brought good news and bad for those who hope to find Martians of some description or other. The good news is that on May 25th Phoenix, America’s latest mission to Mars, landed successfully where many others have failed. The bad is that an analysis of the results of previous successful missions suggests it is unlikely that life ever got going there in the first place, let alone survived the transition to the harsh Martian conditions prevailing today. The balmy, watery past conjured up in the minds of the eternal optimists who inhabit the exobiology departments of the Earth’s universities has been replaced by something more akin to a planet-sized version of the Dead Sea.
May 26
‘Phoenix has landed!’
(National Post) A Canadian-U.S. mission to Mars made a soft landing Sunday night, sending a single laconic “ping” to tell anxious scientists it had landed on a part of the Red Planet called Green Valley.
Then Mars Phoenix took a half-hour nap, waiting quite literally for the dust to settle.
500 scientists and technicians at the University of Arizona cheered, shouted and pumped fists as years of planning resulted in seven minutes of suspenseful descent to Mars, and then the words of victory: “Touchdown signal detected. Phoenix has landed!”
Riding aboard the NASA spacecraft is $30 million worth of Canadian gear that will look up at the Martian weather with sophisticated lasers while a robotic arm digs for signs that Mars could harbour life.
Richard Herd, a meteorite expert with Natural Resources Canada who is an adviser on space exploration, said Canada’s experience exploring our own North gives us vital expertise in the Martian Arctic. NASA chose to land in an icy plain of northern Mars in the hopes that ice just below the surface holds secrets — water of course, but possibly also organic material.
Among the Canadians eager to see more is Steve Oldham, vice-president of MDA Space Group, prime contractor for the Canadian science instruments aboard.
“It’s really fun to be doing things that are going to make a difference, and that are going to expand the human footprint in some fashion.”
“The Canadarm is an iconic program for Canada. Our astronauts are a source of pride. As a small nation we get into space in collaboration with other nations,” he said.”We can’t afford to build our own space station or space shuttle. It’s contributions like Phoenix that allow us to have an astronaut program.”
May 23
Phoenix ready for Mars landing
The Phoenix Mars Lander, which has a Canadian-built weather station aboard, is looking ready to make its landing on Sunday, according to NASA.

20 March
Mars is ‘covered in table salt’
Mars appears to be covered in salt crystals from ancient dried-up lakes, new evidence suggests.
A Nasa probe has found signs that the southern hemisphere is dusted with chloride mineral, perhaps “table salt”.
US scientists think the mineral formed when water evaporated from salty lakes or soil billions of years ago.
6 February 2008
The long quest for life on Mars
… there is something about Mars, in particular, that has always captured the imagination.
Through a small telescope, dark patches can be seen against the Red Planet’s disc. Mars is a dusty world, and right up until the start of the space age it was believed that these were patches of vegetation.

Aug 4 2007
Canadian weather station heads to Mars
The Phoenix Mars Lander, a robot explorer with a Canadian weather station aboard, was launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral in Florida, boosted into space on a Delta II rocket.
The lander will examine the climate at the north pole of Mars after it arrives next spring.
Only five of the world’s 15 attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. NASA’s ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, for example, went silent as it was about to arrive on the planet’s south pole in 1999. It experienced an apparent early shutdown of its rocket engines during descent.
The Phoenix Mars Lander, it’s hoped, will successfully make the first ground-level exploration of the planet’s arctic region.