The title of this thread has been vindicated:
www.space.com...
Proof! Water Ice Found on Mars
By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 20 June 2008
2:55 p.m. ET
Scientists said today they have "found proof" of water ice on Mars away from the polar ice caps, a discovery made by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.
The finding is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires water. Now
scientists can get on with the business of studying the chemistry of Mars dirt in more detail.
When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had
disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.
"It's with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other
substance," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said at a briefing Friday.
The finding had been discussed tentatively yesterday, but in a press conference today, researchers left no doubts.
Phoenix's robotic arm first revealed the crumbs about 5 cm deep in the trench called "Dodo-Goldilocks" on June 15. By June 19, they had vanished.
If the crumbs had been salt, they wouldn't have disappeared, scientists said, and if the ice had been made of carbon dioxide, they wouldn't have
vaporized.
"What this tells us is we found what we're looking for," said Mark Lemmon, a Phoenix co-investigator from Texas A&M University. "This tells us
that we've got water ice within reach of the [robotic] arms, which means that we can continue the investigation."
