The Search for Water on Mars Continues

[Solar]

"WE HAVE WATER"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoen ... 80731.html

"We're seeing nothing"

A few years ago, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft found, from orbit, signs of vast quantities of water ice a few inches below the planet’s surface. In July, mission scientists confirmed that patches of white seen in the soil near the lander were indeed ice.

Phoenix’s weather station has also detected wisps of water vapor in the thin Martian air, and scientists expected that as the nighttime temperature plunged to minus-110 degrees Fahrenheit from minus-20 — and with it the amount of moisture that the Martian air can hold — minuscule specks of moisture would glom onto dust particles at the surface. The presence of water would show up in electrical measurements by a probe stuck into the soil. Except Mars has not cooperated.

“We’re seeing nothing,” said Aaron Zent of the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the lead scientist for Phoenix’s thermal and electroconductivity probe. “Big fat nothing.”

Actually, the first measurement did yield the expected readings. “A lovely signal,” Dr. Zent said. “But we never saw it again.”

Every subsequent measurement, taken at almost all hours of the day, indicated dry soil. - An Icy Discovery on Mars, but Where’s the Water?