After 5 very active months on the north pole of Mars, Phoenix Nasa’s lander ended its mission marking a history as the first Earthborne device to taste the water on Mars. With approaching martian winther more frequent dust storms covered lander’s solar panels with red dust weakening the machine more and more every day. Who knows, maybe like a mythical firebird with the same name, Phoenix will wake up one day? Or an exciting new discovery might show from massive amount of data that Phoenix sent to Earth, like the newborn firebird that rises from ashes.
Posts Tagged ‘Mars’
Phoenix frozen on Mars
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Snow on Mars
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander has detected snow falling from clouds but never reaching the ground. Phoenix is racing with time to complete as much as possible experiments before the power levels from its solar panels drop below the operational minimum.
Is water from Mars drinkable? Can’t say by smelling only…
Friday, August 1st, 2008NASA confirmed what humankind suspected for a long time, that there is water on Mars. Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer aboard NASA’s lander Phoenix detected water vapor from Martian soil sample. Although one of NASA scientists said on their official site that they have tasted Martian water, I would rather say, Phoenix has only smelled it so far.
So is it salty or fresh? It certainly does not smell the same like Mediterranean on Pampelonne beach near St Tropez, but it is very likely salty. Certainly these first results are revolutionary and I am looking forward for further chemical and biological analysis results. Like Earth’s poles ice caps hold a lot of secrets frozen over millions of years, Mars do as well for sure. Although Martian polar ice does not seems to be melting like ours on Earth does due to the global warming, let’s hurry up and discover Martian secrets. We might learn some useful things even for the better life on the mother Earth, not only to find answers to human curiosity. It’s good that Phoenix smelled water also because it got awarded a modest sum of 2 million US$ to pursue its mission for 5 weeks more. And if there was an inhabited ocean on the Mars 4 billion years ago, maybe there is some crude oil under the ice cap, just like on Earth…
Phoenix landed at Vastitas Borealis
Monday, May 26th, 2008As announced earlier, Mars probe called Phoenix, landed at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude on the surface of Mars. Phoenix opened its eyes and sent to the mother Earth this image:
Phoenix appears to be in a good health and we are looking for more news soon from Pasadena.
Microscope to examine dust and ice on Mars
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008As NASA Phoenix probe approaches the red planet and begins to countdown for its landing on Monday the 26th of May, Swiss scientists are getting more nervous. Their Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) mounted on the Phoenix probe is going to perform a historic task of producing high-definition images of Martian ice samples, and who knows, maybe discover biological traces…