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Mars lander ‘touched and tasted’ water, NASA says

NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander.

“We have water,” said William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument on Phoenix.

“We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted,” he said, referring to the craft’s instruments.

NASA on Thursday also extended the mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander through next month, saying its work was moving beyond the search for water to exploring whether the red planet was ever capable of sustaining life.

“We are extending the mission through Sept. 30,” Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA’s Mars exploration program, told a televised news conference.

The US space agency will spend another US$2 million for five extra weeks of research, Meyer said.

“We hope to be able to answer the question of whether this was a habitable zone on Mars. It will be for future missions to find if anyone is home on this environment,” Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith said.

The spacecraft’s robotic arm has dug several trenches in the Martian soil near the planet’s north pole. It has found ice and minerals that are necessary for life and analyzed the soil in a series of small “ovens.”

During the extension of the mission, Phoenix would dig and examine two more trenches, scientists said.

The added time would also allow them to collect more data about the seasons on Mars and take more photographs of the planet, they said.

Phoenix is the latest bid by the space agency to discover whether water — a crucial ingredient for life — ever flowed on Mars and whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, exists or ever existed there.

Phoenix touched down in May on an ice sheet and samples of the ice were seen melting away in photographs taken by the lander’s instruments in June.

Boynton said that water was positively identified after the lander’s robotic arm delivered a soil sample on Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by heating.

Mission scientists said in June that Martian soil was more alkaline than expected and had traces of magnesium, sodium, potassium and other elements.

They described the findings as a “huge step forward.”
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