ICE ON MARS

So the natural local temperature difference (minus loads of degrees at night to plus hundreds of degrees by day) doesn't melt it, but not being covered by a couple of millimeters of sand does? Not convinced it's water ice, please prove it is instead of going in expecting to find it and being optimistic, science guys.

Oh wait - "vaporized" - ok, that could happen. nevermind, ignore that part of previous comment.

Pls to explain what impact this could have on enjoying 'Friends' repeats?

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-183

It would rock to be able to send Christmas cards of snow falling on Mars (hey that even rhymes, could use it inside the card "I has sent u Xmas card / Of snow fallinggye on Marss") - but unlikely to happen as the cameras on Phoenix don't work that way?

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jTzY7skJ3raWHWczabqJ4T5GKypQ

"In an unprecedented discovery, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has found snow falling from clouds on Mars, scientists said Tuesday."

amazing

arrgh sonuvabitch x-post!

They're turning the mic on today too, aren't they? First recordings from Mars!

I want! I want the photos! I want the sound! I want a video clip! Save us Martian snow from our economy!

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20895/1066/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

I think that one pixel in the videoclip is snow. Hopefully we can a clearer view! Mission control:

"Crap in a hat sir, it looks like it's snowing over there."
"Turn that sucker around and head straight for it!"
"But sir, what about these important soil tests we still have to do?"
"Fuck that, isn't fucking snowing on Mars!!"

NASA Spacecraft Sees Ice on Mars Exposed by Meteor Impacts

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/388886main_mars_ice_226x170.jpg

"Mars was screaming at us that it had a lot of water and ice."

A new radar map of Mars' mid-latitudes confirms that they are the remnants of a vast ice sheet hidden under the Martian rubble.

The icy leftovers have been found over a significant part of Deuteronilus Mensae, an area about halfway between the Martian equator and North Pole. The ice was mapped by the Italian Space Agency's Shallow Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2008/details/PSP_010446_1255.jpg

New evidence of (transient) liquid water on Mars

This HiRISE image shows a small region of a Martian crater named Russel (click to access much bigger versions of it). There are a lot of sand dunes in it, and as you can see in the lower left, many gullies as well. These gullies were obviously carved by something moving downslope. Sometimes, these gullies can form due to the presence of dry ice: frozen carbon dioxide, which is abundant on Mars. In the summer, as temperatures warm, the dry ice turns into a gas, dislodging material and letting it roll downhill. It’s thought that quite a few gullies on Mars are formed this way (as well as very dramatic avalanches).
But these Russell Crater gullies are different. They do seem to form at higher elevations, near the tops of dunes, as you’d expect. But there are also weird dark spots near these locations, which are poorly understood. The gullies seem to be constrained in their width; they don’t get broader downslope. Mind you, these are super-hi-res images; the gullies shown here are only a few meters across, if even that! You could easily hop across them if you were strolling across the Red Planet’s surface.

The gullies do widen where two tributaries meet, which is exactly as you’d expect from flowing material. That’s probably clearer in this picture of the same region but taken at a different time:

But the really weird thing is how the gullies end. If this were just sand flowing because it was disrupted by dry ice evaporating, you’d expect to see a fan-shaped formation where the gullies terminate downslope. That’s the natural way flowing sand comes to a halt, by spreading out and forming those big triangles. But these gullies don’t do that. Instead, they just kinda stop. The gullies suddenly end in an abrupt narrowing of the trench, as if the material that’s moving is being reabsorbed by the surface underneath it.

That is certainly not what you expect from solid material like sand flowing downhill. It’s far more like the way an actual flowing liquid behaves. Because of this a team of German scientists studying this data think this may be more evidence that water can exist as a liquid on the surface of Mars, at least for short periods, time enough to flow downhill a bit. So we’re talking seconds or minutes here, not years, but still. Holy Haleakala.

Here I was thinking Ben 'n' Jerry's had opened a shop there.

NASA saying more evidence in re: water and Mars.

http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-salt-water-surface-110804.html

And plenty of spots elsewhere.

http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=boyle6A38E163-8448-9573-027A-40EB46064646.jpg

Mysterious cloud spotted on Mars

Amateur astronomers are puzzling over a seemingly anomalous cloud that has shown up on images of Mars taken over the past few days. Is it really a cloud, or a trick of the eye? Does it really extend 150 miles up from the surface, as some of the observers suggest? And what churned up all that stuff, anyway? The amateurs and the pros will be trying to resolve those questions before the phenomenon fades away

bouncing riggins imo