Search for Water-Ice by the Phoenix Mars Lander-Part IV
“It was thought that any liquid on the surface would evaporate almost immediately,” Julie Chittenden, a graduate student with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences told SPACE.com. “These brine solutions enable water to stay liquid at colder temperatures. If you expose these brine solutions to cold temperatures, they can exist for a very long period of time.”
The Phoenix spacecraft is following the NASA Holy Grail—water and anything that supports life on Mars. The search for water is controlling the missions to outer space, although Mars is nothing but a cold desert with early rumors of no liquid water on its surface until recently. With the findings of the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002, we now recognize that there are large amounts of water ice on its surface, just below the surface of Mars in its northern arctic plain. Missions from the Exploration Rover missions also suggest that water has been on this planet at some point in time.
The Phoenix will be the first mission from Earth to collect data from the Martian arctic, allowing the scientists to create models of Mars’ past climate and predicting future weather processes. Hopefully, the robotic arm of the Phoenix will be able to dig deep enough in order to uncover information about water ice on the planet and its soil. There are some theories by scientists, stating that liquid ice on the Mars arctic may be as recent as 100,000 years ago.
The importance of liquid water is that it stays as liquid water, because it stays liquid within a very wide range having the ability to hold energy. Mars has very low temperatures and also extremely low atmospheric pressure—this causes the Martian water to evaporate so fact from ice to gas that it totally skips the liquid phase. But some of the latest research shows this will not happen, as long as the liquid water or ice is salty—with research demonstrating that salty water can exist on Mars as a liquid.
Liquid water is amazing in the fact that water in a liquid form, will help chemicals move into and out of cells. Water ice and water vapor do not have this ability, as liquid water helps proteins do their work. The Phoenix Lander will be hunting for water and clues to Mars’ past, present, and future. Searching for liquid water or ice under Martian surfaces is based on the fact that water floats when it becomes frozen, and a frozen layer of water (ice) will help insulate the water below it. Overall, the Phoenix mission will follow the water on Mars and will then us guide human colonization and exploration.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
