Phoenix Mars lander 'tastes' first sample of water ice.

Phoenix Mars lander 'tastes' first sample of water ice.
Updated 19:43 01 August 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Devin Powell
"After weeks of struggling to scrape icy material from just below the
surface of Mars, NASA's Phoenix lander has collected and analysed its
first sample of water ice.
"We've finally touched it and tasted it. It tastes very fine," said
team member William Boynton of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"On Wednesday, Phoenix's robotic arm scooped out a sample of dirt from
a 5-centimetre deep trench called "Snow White", which it began digging
in June. The soil was transferred to one of the lander's eight TEGA
(Thermal Evolved-Gas Analyzer) ovens and slowly warmed to 2 °Celsius
(36 °Fahrenheit).
"When the temperature reached 0 °C (32 °F), the instrument had to add
extra heat to continue warming the sample – the signature of frozen
ice melting. TEGA's mass spectrometer also directly detected minute
traces of water."
http://space.newscientist.com/articl...water-ice.html

Interestingly, Boynton also said that salts in the soil may have
allowed ice to melt that would have the stickiness seen in the Phoenix
samples.
From the article:

"On 15 July, the team used a sort of drill called a rasp attached to
the scoop to cut cores out of Snow White and collect the shavings in a
compartment on the back side of the scoop. But when the scoop was
turned upside down, the sample stuck to the walls inside. Martian salt
may have melted the ice and made the soil sticky, says Boynton."


Note that the ice just turning into a gas, sublimating, would not
make the soil sticky. Keep in mind also that salts also depress the
pressure requirements for liquid water as it does the temperature
requirements.

Bob Clark