December 16, 2008
NASA studies Mars’ arctic soil
The U.S. space agency says martian soil its Phoenix Mars Lander collected this year is very cold and dry, but during climate cycles it might become moist.
Phoenix found clues increasing scientists' confidence in predictive models about water vapor moving through the soil between the atmosphere and subsurface water-ice, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said, noting the models predict the vapor flow can wet the soil when the tilt of Mars' axis, the obliquity, is greater than it is now.
The ice under the soil around Phoenix is not a sealed-off deposit left from some ancient ocean, said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.
It is in equilibrium with the environment, and the environment changes with the obliquity cycles on scales from hundreds of thousands of years to a few million years.
The findings were presented this week in San Francisco during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.