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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gtkisaru" data-source="post: 2541563" data-attributes="member: 68721">NASA probe confirms water on Mars.<img src="http://www.elakiri.com/forum/images/icons/sq/11.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /><img src="http://images.theage.com.au/2008/08/01/171989/wr_sl_world_mars-420x0.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> A panoramic view of Mars taken by NASA's Phoenix lander. Scientists say the probe is sitting on an ice sheet.         Photo: Reuters [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]<img src="http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/h_mars_cloud_062000_01.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />[/FONT][/FONT]    [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]NASA had found evidence of water on Mars. The tremendous discovery fuels hope for microbial life on the Red Planet. It also makes a human mission to Mars more practical.[/FONT][/FONT]..[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Arial, Helvetica] [/FONT][/FONT]   NASA scientists said Thursday the Phoenix lander exploring Mars had confirmed water on the planet after analysis of a soil sample from the Red planet's surface.The discovery was made after the lander's robotic arm delivered a sample this week to an instrument onboard the lander that identifies vapors through heating samples. HEATED to zero degrees, a sample of soil being analysed by NASA's Phoenix Mars lander let out a puff of vapour, providing final confirmation that the lander is sitting over a large chunk of ice.      "We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William Boynton, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and the lead scientist monitoring the instrument that detected the water, told a news conference on Thursday. "And I'd like to say, from my standpoint, it tastes very fine."                The mission now had definitive proof of water on Mars, he said. "The fact that it melted at zero degrees centigrade leaves very little doubt."                   The main goal of the lander is to analyse ice in Mars' northern arctic plains. Since its arrival on May 25, scientists have seen what they were almost certain was ice: a flat, shiny patch beneath the lander and tiny white chunks in a trench dug by the lander's robotic arm.      But the analysis performed in one of the instruments, heating the sample in a tiny oven and observing what vapourised, was the first direct measurement.      The chief scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, Michael Meyer, said the mission had been extended to September 30, five weeks beyond the original three months. He said it had already met the milestones the agency considered were "minimum mission success" and was close to "full mission success".      "The mission is going very well," Dr Meyer said.      A 360-degree panoramic image of the landscape has been completed, and a weather station has been providing meteorological information including temperature, pressure and wind speeds.      The lander had some difficulty shaking the soil out of its scoop into the instruments for analysis.      One sample of soil was analyzed by the thermal and evolved gas analyser (TEGA) in June. That sample, taken at the surface, did not contain water ice. The sample did release water vapour, but at much higher temperatures, which indicated water trapped within minerals. The second sample was scraped from a trench dug five centimeters into the soil.      Signs of vast quantities of underground ice in the polar regions were first spotted from orbit by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft in 2002. With the up-close analysis by the lander, scientists hope to determine whether the ice had ever melted and whether the region was ever habitable.      The mission's principal investigator, Peter Smith, said the analysis had just begun.      Scientists plan to dig two more trenches and take a more detailed panoramic picture of the surrounding plains. One of the trenches will be named Cupboard because, Mr Smith said, "Maybe the cupboard is full, and this is a place for new discoveries." <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/world/puff-and-definite-proof-of-the-existence-of-water-on-mars-20080801-3ol0.html" target="_blank">Source1.</a> <a href="http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_iXVr5PUzjCDugmV824FE_sorZw" target="_blank">Source 2.</a>                        </blockquote>

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