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Phoenix Finds No Water on Mars Surface… So Far

by Ian O'Neill on June 16, 2008

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Color-coded elevation map shows the "Dodo-Goldilocks" trench dug by the Robotic Arm on NASA\'s Phoenix Mars Lander (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University/NASA Ames Research Center)
The results are now in from the first sample of Mars regolith to be baked in Phoenix’s oven. It’s not good news… there’s no water. After a difficult time of actually delivering the sample to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) – a.k.a. the “oven” – scientists were hopeful for a clear science run. They were finally able to sift the clumpy regolith through the TEGA screen last week. However, the sample was waiting on the deck of Phoenix for some time until tests could be carried out on the sample; it seems probable that any water ice will have sublimed into the thin atmosphere. This first null result by no means suggests the area is devoid of water, Phoenix has many more water-finding tricks up its sleeves yet…

On June 11th, Phoenix mission control breathed a sigh of relief as they found a solution to the problem of getting the clumpy Mars regolith through the oven screen. Over the weekend they were able to carry out the first tests on the sample and it appears that everything functioned as it should when the sample was heated to 35°C (95°F). At this temperature any water in the sample will have melted. In the second phase of the test, the sample was heated up to 175°C (350°F). No water vapour was detected.

“We saw no water coming off the soil whatsoever” – William Boynton, TEGA team leader, University of Arizona.

Scientists are in no way surprised or discouraged about this early result. The regolith sample sat atop the lander’s TEGA hatch for several days whilst scientists tried to find an answer as to why no particles had fallen into the oven. It is believed that any water ice in the sample will have quickly vaporized in the Martian sunlight and thin atmosphere. As the atmospheric pressure is so low on Mars, exposed water ice cannot melt into liquid water, it will sublime straight to water vapour (by-passing the liquid phase).

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Over the coming days, scientists will instruct Phoenix to fire up the TEGA again to heat the sample to 1000°C (1800°F). This will vaporize minerals that might be chemically bound to H2O, CO2 or SO2 and then use instrumentation to measure the vented gases. Scientists are very confident that, although water has not been directly detected today, they will detect evidence of its existence in the next round of tests.

Whilst the drama unfolds in the lander’s oven, Phoenix continues its excavation work on the surface with its robotic arm. It has just expanded a trench (a 3D visualization can be seen at the top of this post) by linking the two trenches “Dodo” and “BabyBear” into a new united “Dodo-Goldilocks” trench. This is the location where scientists noticed white sediment last Friday, so they will be keen to learn whether this is water or salt.

Source: Space.com

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[Follow me on Twitter (@astroengine)]

[Check out my space blog: Astroengine.com]

[Check out my radio show: Astroengine Live!]

Hello! My name is Ian O'Neill and I've been writing for the Universe Today since December 2007. I am a solar physics doctor, but my space interests are wide-ranging. Since becoming a science writer I have been drawn to the more extreme astrophysics concepts (like black hole dynamics), high energy physics (getting excited about the LHC!) and general space colonization efforts. I am also heavily involved with the Mars Homestead project (run by the Mars Foundation), an international organization to advance our settlement concepts on Mars. I also run my own space physics blog: Astroengine.com, be sure to check it out!

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  • Steve

    Aoddhan,
    With regards to the subs we have sent to the bottom of the ocean, thats 10km deep, not upwards of 100+, so Id be highly skeptical or anything suriviving that kind of pressure with out current technology.

    And I suppose you are right about us being able to heat through the ice, however, it would probably take years

  • Aodhhan

    Steve,

    Please, see library. :)

  • Estuardo

    Where do these people come from? I cannot understand how it is possible to be so thoroughly in denial of reality.

    http://www.getmentalhelp.com/

  • Marco Fitz

    Bad news… :(

  • TerraHertz

    Since the demonstrations that NASA is fiddling the colors of Mars images from the rovers (witness the reference color swatches on top of the rover, in which known pure green and blue swatches appear reddish-brown like everything else – including the pure white electrical cabling which appears pink) I’m not taking anything NASA publishes seriously.

    They’ve clearly been subverted to serve *some* kind of misinformation program, even if it’s not clear what the reason may be.

    Now we see another Mars lander, from which images are either black and white (in the age of ubiquitous, dirt cheap high-res miniature color cameras – give me a break!) or the same old ‘Red channel turned right up’ lying garbage. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting. I mean come on – even parts of Phoenix which are obviously a clean white (eg parts of the solar array) appear red-brown. The deep blue solar cells appear muddy brown-bluish. Who the heck do these idiots think they are fooling?

    More importantly, *why* are they trying? How does it cause anyone a problem if people see true-color images from Mars, in which the sky is light blue, and rocks look like ordinary rocks? As truthfully shown at a JPL news conference, at which JPL displayed rover images constructed from the original raw data feeds, *before* NASA applied their ‘make everything muddy brown’ filter.

    Come on NASA, stop lying. You are just making yourselves look stupid, and destroying your once-great reputation.

  • Kevin White

    Good grief. :(

    Some of these comments are just saddening.

  • Learner

    Debunkers come with the territory.

    It never stopped any serious science buffs before and it won’t stop them now.

    Read up on the Van Allen Belt after it was referred to in a comment. It was interesting. High altitude nuclear explosions test in 1962 and what followed, was very interesting. Read in wikipedia.

  • Al Hall

    TerraHertz-
    Well… Let us hope that some day Hollywood can once again make it look as real as they did 40 years ago…. For some strange reason they have yet to do it.. I don’t understand.. Their budget is bigger than NASA’s… They want to sell tickets, don’t they?…. Why won’t they make it look realistic like they did in the 60s and 70s (for the Apollo missions)?….. Their movies otherwise still look fake.. to this day..!
    Well… I have an answer… But I am sure that someone else will answer it before me… And I won’t have to call anyone names..

  • al

    what’s with the freaks ? .. mention mars and all of a sudden they all come out to play .. sheesh.

  • Kimmer

    I love Velikosvy’s books and james mccanney’s books are great and his website is good. (jmccsci.com) He has a weekly talk and his shows are archived. Very interesting. He can be heard on reality radio.

  • http://irrationaltheorist.blogspot.com/ Quantum_Flux

    NASA should bring distilled/bottled water next time and then drop it on the ground so that it can say that mars has some water.

  • http://astroengine.com/ Ian O’Neill

    Wow! Phoenix is in Nevada? Or Area 51? Who would have thought it. I’ll retract this article and publish the proof that there is actually “no water in the Nevada desert.”

    I think that conspiracy would be harder to achieve than actually sending a robot to Mars – refer to Matt’s Occam Razor comment ;)

    Cheers! Ian ;)

  • greg c

    wow. i cant believe the ignorant conspiracy charges! hilarious!

  • Chuck Lam

    What next if water is detected on Mars?

  • MarkB

    What’s with the whole “Mars isn’t red” conspiracy/madness? All you have to do is look at it through a telescope or even the naked eye to confirm that it’s true.

  • greg c

    MarkB,

    they must be color blind! “mars is gray! i swear!”

  • Ell Jay

    Internet forums: Anonymity + Audience = Total Dickwads.

    Whose bright idea was it anyways to allow the Great Unwashed to write whatever they want wherever they want?

  • Al Hall

    I like it! At least at this site. I don’t like the major news site forums, though.. It seems they pick and choose the comments they want to publish based on their bias. Of course occasionally throwing in the ‘other’ side’s so they can pretend to be fair.
    With this site, yes there are the occasional trolls, political activists, spammers and crackpots but for the most part it is the average ‘Joe’ with an opinion or a question. I like it. It doesn’t matter if one is an Astrophysicist or a “stay at home mom”… I like to hear all (most) ideas or thoughts. I think it broadens all of our thinking when we share ideas and thoughts. I think it is also great that this site isn’t regimentally moderated. That would really be a bummer when we are in our drunken stupors on a Friday night, waiting and waiting.. Just my two cents worth.

  • http://www.searchbuddy.info Martin Gradwell

    No, no water on Mars. Only Ice. Unimaginably vast quantities of it. Phoenix is sitting on a vast “sea” of ice, coated with a thin layer of dust, just like much of the Martian surface. Phoenix would detect water if it could, but all that ice gets in the way. It’s so frustrating! It makes the soil clump together, so it won’t drop into the oven. And by the time the ice has all sublimated (evaporated) away, all of the water is inexplicably gone too. The patches of ice on the ground, too, sublimate away, getting visibly smaller over time, as if they’re mocking our diminishing chances of finding water. But we’ll find water, despite all that ice! Just mark my words!

  • TerraHertz

    @ Martin Gradwell – Yes, it’s quite amusing. The black & white pictures taken looking under the lander, that shows solid ice (probably) exposed when the landing rockets blew away the few inches of dust. What a pity that wasn’t a color camera. Or was it? The surface sure looks like ice that’s been rocket exhaust sublimed. What luck it couldn’t be seen to be ice-colored – otherwise people wouldn’t have been holding their breath for the oven results.

    I can’t help wondering if the ‘inability to drop some soil into the oven’ was scripted, and someone not in the loop noticed the ice chunks sublimation in the photos – something that wasn’t in the ‘nope, no water to be found here’ script.

    Also getting a good laugh from the ‘oh how stupid – just look at Mars through a telescope- it’s clearly red.’ Yes, and so are many desert areas of Earth from space. Of course Mars looks redish from space. No one would be so stupid as to claim otherwise. But when in a desert, look up. what color is the sky on a clear day? Also while there, take a picture of something white, or blue, or green – does the ‘red desert’ make everything in the photo look red? No, it doesn’t.

    Yet in past NASA publications of images from Mars, *everything* is reddish. Even the bits of the rovers/lander that are known to be white, or other colors. And no, it’s not a ‘dust film’ – the effect is there even in early pics before there was significant dusting. As with Phoenix’s solar arrays. The white parts look pink, the blue solar cells look brownish, and in the early shots of that trench, the parts that we now see looking pure white in pics after they admit it’s ice, were dull brown.

    Even JPL tried to correct the lies – witness their press conference last year in which they presented their versions of rover pictures of Mars – correct colors, light blue sky, etc.

    Sure, it’s a relatively minor detail, but none the less, NASA’a ‘Mars colors’ are a lie. And you can’t trust *anything* from a known liar.

    I’d be a lot happier if the raw image & science data was published on the net immediately it was received, before NASA ‘tidied it up’. Since it’s publicly funded research, it should be.

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