The Truth About Water on Mars: 5 New Findings

• Mars
• Phoenix Mission
• NASA
• research
• ice

"What we know isn't everything," Hecht says. "We do leave potential discrepancies, and that's fine." There's a lot left to learn, especially about the big question—the possibility of life. While bacteria enjoy a meal of perchlorate, which packs plenty of energy, they usually eat in diluted form on Earth. The chemical absorbs water so easily that it acts as a desiccant, and that could be deadly for microbes on a dry place like Mars.

While there are more papers yet to come, Phoenix may have gone as far as it can on the life question, Smith says. The lander took the first big step by finding ice, and he says upcoming studies could take the second big step by giving further evidence that Mars was once a habitable zone, and could be again. If there are Martian microbes, he speculates, they're probably in an underground crack where there's more heat and moisture. It'll take another lander to go find them.

CLICK FOR MORE The Truth About Water On Mars
Lesson 1: Layers of Ice	Lesson 2: Calcium Carbonate	Lesson 3: Martian Clouds	Lesson 4: Perchlorate Controversy	Lesson 5: Life on Mars

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