It Really Looks Like Ice on Mars

by Nancy Atkinson on May 31, 2008


Take a look at this image sent back from the Phoenix lander. On Friday, Phoenix scientist Ray Arvidson said there may be ice directly under the Phoenix lander, exposed in the blast zone by the retrorockets used for Phoenix’s soft landing. Friday’s image showed a small portion of the exposed area that looks brighter and smoother than the surrounding soil. On Saturday, Sol 5 for Phoenix on Mars, a new image shows a greater portion of the area under the lander. Scientists say the abundance of excavated smooth and level surfaces adds evidence to a hypothesis that the underlying material is an ice table covered by a thin blanket of soil. This is just what the Phoenix mission was hoping to find, and how incredible to land directly over your goal.

The bright-looking surface material in the center, where the image is partly overexposed, may not be inherently brighter than the foreground material in shadow. But the scientists are calling this area “Holy Cow.” Reportedly (via Emily at the Planetary Society) that’s exactly the phrase exclaimed when this image was returned. More pictures of this feature will be imaged using different exposures in an effort to determine if this really is ice.

The other interesting aspect of this image is that the retrorocket nozzles are visible right at the top of the image.

We’ll keep you posted when there’s more information and data available on the area under the lander.

Sources: Phoenix, Planetary Blog


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  • Andy C

    I should add to that last post… the SSI for Phoenix is apparently the same as from the Mars Polar Lander, which is what that doc refers to.

  • http://www.sps.aero John K

    NASA has some raw images recently posted of closer views of the white area under the lander.
    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/index.html
    Don’t know if it is ice, but it sure as heck has frozen melt characteristics, and in what may be thinner coverage areas, it appears somewhat translucent…

  • chichi

    how do they process the pictures to color? and how? is it possible to do it yourself? like photoshop? i know its something with the color dial

  • Andre

    “It really looks like ice on Mars”

    I have seen photos of mars covered in white many times, specially the poles. So, of course, there is ice on Mars.

    I´m very excited with this mission and all the information we will gather but could somebody explain what´s the big deal so far ?

    PS: And please, keep this “NASA hiding something” story to the X-Files forum.
    It is amazing that we can see so much as it happens.

  • The Scott

    Oh my god.

    This is ridiculous.

    First, you want me to believe that the missions never left earth. Then you want me to believe that NASA actually does take pictures of Mars from the surface and then messes with the colors to hide something?

    Why don’t you go home, take a long hot bath and think real hard about what inane bee ess you actually want me to believe, and then come back and get your story straight.

    Here. This should be all you need to know to determine if NASA is messing with the colors. Go out and get a telescope and a spectrograph. You can get one at the physics department of any college where they teach physics or astronomy.

    With these two devices (both invented more than 400 years ago) you can determine what elements and compounds are actually in the atmosphere of Mars by -direct observation-. From there you can extrapolate what color the sky should be, because when the light from Mars’ atmosphere shines through the spectrograph, you are looking at the signature of the atmosphere’s real color.

    *I* don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. *I* know Hogland is full of it. *You* are a sheep, and need to stand on your own two feet and quit falling for every shovel load of crap everyone throws at you. NASA could care less about whether people think they are hiding anything… you know why? Its called “clear conscience”.

    Wake up. Join the human race.

  • old man

    It used to be that scientists wouldn’t publish results until they were certain by way of tests. Now we have these yahoos with the mars robots shooting their mouths off prior to knowing anything. They did that with the rovers too. I think it reflects poorly when they have to continually “eat crow” – “oh, its just a rock”. Not unlike the “face on mars”, but now the scientists are getting into the act. Very unprofessional.

  • Andy C

    chichi,

    > how do they process the pictures to color?…

    I can’t say exactly how the Phoenix images are being processed, but I would recommend that you take a look at the FITS Liberator plug-in for Photoshop, which is used for processing Hubble and VLT images.

    http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/

    I don’t know if the Phoenix images are/will be available in the FITS file format (but I would hope so).

  • ibmetom

    I’m Canadian, I won’t believe it until they find a puck.

  • rich

    Maybe the retrorockets blew away the ‘soil’ that had been covering the ice. This might explain why there appears to be mounds of ‘soil’ in the foreground and the localisation.

  • Stranger

    “I’m sort of intrigued as to why the Rockets didn’t melt the ice since it appears to be directly beneath them.”

    The rockets may have melted the ice initially; however, the ice probably froze back over fairly quickly. Or maybe not. Who knows.

  • Justin

    Scientists have known for a very long time that ice existed on the northern region of Mars, it’s ground water that they are looking for.

  • Oscar

    “how do they process the pictures to color? and how? is it possible to do it yourself? like photoshop? i know its something with the color dial”

    You put the red filter in front of the monochrome sensor and take an exposure, repeat for green and blue getting 3 images.

    You then open up photoshop, drop the red photo into the red plane, the green photo into the green plane, and the blue photo into the blue plane.
    You’ll need to make sure that the images are in registration with each other and then use the histogram tool to correct the color balance.

  • brian

    Hmm, if you compare the “ice” to the patch of dust in the left foreground, then it looks a LOT like it really isn’t ice at all, but just another dusty patch which has been overexposed and whited out due to being in direct sunlight rather than the shadow of the rover.

    I think NASA may have jumped the gun massively here. Presumably that dusty patch in the foreground was also exposed by the retro rockets in exactly the same way, but it doesn’t look at all like ice.

    Not that I’m saying there isn’t ice there somewhere, but I don’t think there’s any in this photograph.

  • http://lampadamagica.blogspot.com Jorge

    On the colour issue and how Phoenix cameras work, Emily at the Planetary Society has some cool info in her latest Phoenix post. I hope she won’t mind me quoting her:

    The robotic arm camera gets color data in a different way than most spacecraft cameras do. Most space cameras get color images by placing filters across their optical paths that block out all but a small range of wavelengths. Take three such images with different filters and you can create a color image. The robotic arm camera has no filters. Instead, it has three sets of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), in red, green, and blue. To get information in red wavelengths, they illuminate their target with red light and take the picture. This works much better in dark, shadowed areas like the inside of a trench than it does in brightly illuminated regions;

    So no filters for this one, but the principle is pretty much the same (although I fail to see how this works for panoramic views).

    I also wrote something that isn’t entirely true in my last comment: not all space cameras are black and white. Most are, but not all. New Horizons has a highres grayscale camera for details and a lowres colour camera for colour. I guess it will speed by its targets too quickly to allow for the taking of the typical three (or more) consecutive pictures that are used to compose a colour photo. Low illumination and the consequent need for longer exposures may also be a factor.

  • GI Joe

    @ibmeton:

    I’m American and I won’t believe it until they find guns.

  • http://www.bebo.com Andrew Atchison

    Im british and im also 17. I wont believe it until I see a martion sending a bebo comment to Gordon Brown with tips on how to be a rubbish primeminister!

  • http://yojoe.com Cobra Commander

    The reasons given for not having color images are specious at best.

    Government agencies put national security above open science and the truth. To believe otherwise is to be a sheep.

  • to the idiots

    Look at the posts below before bitchin about the black and white photos.

  • autumn

    I imagine that any hypothetical ice would not be of the pristine variety. Wouldn’t it be more of an ice/mud slurry?
    I lived in New Jersey when I was young, and I don’t recall ever seeing ice that looked like, well, ice. It was all very colorful and had a dirt-like texture.

  • Surinder

    It may not be ice. Just have a look at the peable at top left, which is also of same color. It may be the bigger rock of same type.

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