[FPSPACE] FW: Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: "NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory" <info at jpl.nasa.gov>
>Reply-To: <info at jpl.nasa.gov>
>Subject: Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice
>Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:20:33 -0700
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>         NASA JPL news
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>Guy Webster 818-354-6278
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>                     Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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>                     guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov
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>Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
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>                     NASA Headquarters, 
>Washington                                                                               
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>                     dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov
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>Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
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>                     University of Arizona, Tucson
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>                     shammond at lpl.arizona.edu
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>NEWS RELEASE: 2008-113              
>                                               June 19, 2008
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>Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice
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>TUCSON, Ariz. -- Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from 
>inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander 
>four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water 
>that vaporized after digging exposed it.
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>"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the 
>University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing 
>over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. 
>There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt 
>can't do that."
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>The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called 
>"Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 
>15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone 
>when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24.
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>Also early today, digging in a different trench, the Robotic Arm connected 
>with a hard surface that has scientists excited about the prospect of next 
>uncovering an icy layer.
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>The Phoenix science team spent Thursday analyzing new images and data 
>successfully returned from the lander earlier in the day.
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>Studying the initial findings from the new "Snow White 2" trench, located 
>to the right of "Snow White 1," Ray Arvidson of Washington University in 
>St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm, said, "We have dug a trench 
>and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other 
>trench."
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>On Sol 24, Phoenix extended the first trench in the middle of a polygon at 
>the "Wonderland" site. While digging, the Robotic Arm came upon a firm 
>layer, and after three attempts to dig further, the arm went into a holding 
>position. Such an action is expected when the Robotic Arm comes upon a hard 
>surface.
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>Meanwhile, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver 
>is preparing a software patch to send to Phoenix in a few days so 
>scientific data can again be saved onboard overnight when needed. Because 
>of a large amount a duplicative file-maintenance data generated by the 
>spacecraft Tuesday, the team is taking the precaution of not storing 
>science data in Phoenix's flash memory, and instead downlinking it at the 
>end of every day, until the conditions that produced those duplicative data 
>files are corrected.
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>"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," 
>said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion 
>Laboratory, Pasadena. "Our three-month schedule has 30 days of margin for 
>contingencies like this, and we have used only one contingency day out of 
>24 sols. The mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent 
>progress toward full mission success."
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>The Phoenix mission is led by Smith of the University of Arizona with 
>project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, 
>located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space 
>Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of 
>Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the 
>Finnish Meteorological Institute. The latest Phoenix images and information 
>are at http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.
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