Data
collected by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander before it went silent for good on the
Red Planet is providing valuable insight for a new study on the interactions between
the Martian dirt and atmosphere.

NASA’s
Phoenix lander has been sitting idle in the Martian arctic since November 2008,
when engineers lost the ability to contact the craft after its solar power
supplies were depleted by the Martian winter. Photographs
of the Phoenix lander from spacecraft orbiting Mars showed
extensive damage to its solar arrays.

But
now, Phoenix has a chance to contribute again thanks to a new study that
draws on the data the probe gathered before it died. [Photos
of Phoenix on Mars]

Vincent
Chevrier, a research professor at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary
Sciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, has received funding
from NASA to study measurements made previously by the now-defunct Phoenix mission. Chevrier hopes to develop a better understanding of
how dirt on Mars interacts with the planet’s atmosphere, as well as whether
these interactions ever produce liquid water.

Phoenix
data’s new life

Phoenix
landed on Mars in May 2008, and conducted a successful mission, outlasting its
planned three-month tenure. It carried equipment to take samples of the Martian
dirt to search for signs that the environment could be habitable to microbial
life.

Chevrier
will analyze Phoenix data on Mars dirt’s temperature, humidity, electrical
conductivity, heat parameters and permittivity, which is the measure of a
material’s ability to transmit an electric field.

These
tens of thousands of measurements, which were collected over the course of
about six months, could
reveal how the dirt affects the stability of ice and the formation of liquid
brine solutions, which contain liquid water.

"Our
group has shown that it is thermodynamically possible to have a stable liquid
in the soil for a few hours a day under certain conditions," Chevrier
said. "The effect of the regolith, or soil, on the water cycle is poorly
understood and the Phoenix data provide a unique insight into these
processes."

If
there is liquid
water on Mars, it might cause certain changes in some of the
electrical data from the Phoenix lander, Chevrier said. However,
those changes could be extremely subtle, or even nonexistent.

"You
need a continuous layer of fluid in order to detect changes in these
parameters," Chevrier said. "A drop of water won’t do it."

Salty
Mars dirt

Chevrier’s
study will also examine the nature and composition of the salts in the Mars
dirt at the Phoenix site, including perchlorates, a type of charged compound
containing hydrogen, chlorine and oxygen.

The
Phoenix mission originally determined the presence of perchlorates on the surface of Mars. These compounds attract
water, which means that they may help control humidity in the soil and
atmosphere, said Chevrier.

Current
meteorological models for Mars are somewhat basic. While they work well for
predicting where a Mars explorer should land, they fail to accurately describe
the complex atmosphere on the planet, Chevrier said.

The
researchers will examine how the soil on Mars interacts with the atmosphere by
studying the exchange of water vapor between salts, as well as the speed of
absorption where water molecules collect around grains in the soil. Then, they
will examine the ice layer under the top layer of soil,
looking for signs of sublimation, in which the ice becomes gas and is dispersed
through the soil.

Hunting
Mars water

After
studying the Martian dirt, Chevrier’s team will focus on liquid water.

"If
the salts can exchange, maybe they will form a brine solution," Chevrier
said.

This
will require a detailed examination of the data, since Chevrier’s previous study
showed that liquid water might be stable for a mere two or three hours on a
given day.

Chevrier
will also reinvestigate the chemical data to detect the possible presence of
chlorate, another compound. Currently, Phoenix’s measurements do not fit with scientists’
understanding of the chemical composition of the Martian soil.

Chevrier
and his team of researchers believe the discrepancy may be explained by the
presence of chlorates as well as perchlorate. These two molecules appear
similar to the instruments on Phoenix, and have approximately the same
stability.

• Gallery
  - Mars: A Spacecraft Graveyard
• Images: Phoenix on Mars!
• NASA
  Declares Phoenix Mars Lander Broken and Dead

• Original Story: Dead Spacecraft on Mars Lives on in New Study

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