Mars as seen by the Hubble Telescope. Credit:NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J.Bell (Cornell University), and M.Wolff (Space Science Institute, Boulder)

Phoenix Mission Update: There was some debate among those on the Phoenix team, or at least some reservation in confirming, that Phoenix had indeed not only found water ice, but landed right on top of it, well it is now definite, the Phoenix craft found water ice on Mars. This is not a total surprise, in fact it was the chief science goal of the entire mission and it has been known for some time that there is in fact water ice on Mars, though that shouldn’t lessen the importance of the Phoenix find at all. So not only did the craft achieve its goal of finding the water ice it has now performed and returned data on some milestone experiments conducting on Martian soil. Using samples of the soil that it dug out of the Martian landscape, Phoenix has performed the first wet chemistry ever done on soil from any planet other than the Earth, along with baking it to a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius, another first for alien soil. The results are still coming in but so far they have found that the soil has definitely interacted with water in the past, it has several chemicals needed for life, life as we know it anyway; having components of magnesium, chloride, sodium and potassium, as well as resembling in many characteristics soil from Antarctica and a few other spots on the Earth. Just the data that has already come down from Phoenix has more than proved the mission a success and surely more and more milestone discoveries will be coming to us. Stay tuned for more updates. To see more on these discoveries or the Phoenix mission in general follow this link: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/news.php

Dew on Mars: A project to analyze soil data from Mars missions spanning 30 years has been led by a team at the University of California, Berkley and is suggesting that in the past Mars had enough atmospheric moisture for dew or a very light drizzle. By analyzing such a wealth of information on the soil from so many missions designed to detect in different ways the team has discovered that the soil on the Martian surface had lost some of the elements that original formed it, which suggests that water has moved downward through it, carrying the elements away. The prevailing view of water in Mars’ past is that it was mainly upwelling through the material and not flowing down through it, but this new study is showing different possibilities that may have accompanied the upwelling. The amount of water that moved through the soil was minimal, sulfates were found in the soil, which usually wash away with any large amount of water washing down through it, so the Martian climate had enough moisture to wash away some of the sulfates but not all. This kind of environment is found in some regions of the Earth and the team is claiming that the data suggests that places on Earth resemble Mars in some processes, this is not a very popular view however and the UC at Berkley team is getting flack for using Earth processes to evaluate Martian geologic and climatic history. But the researchers insist that sulfate found on the surface with layers of chloride salt below it is evidence for thier theory. Though somewhat controversial the study is more than worth taking a look at. To read more on this research visit the following link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625093242.htm

Mars has the Biggest Impact Crater yet Found: Using data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter researchers have found considerable evidence that Mars was home to a massive impact crater that happened early in the formation of the solar system. There has long been debate over the curious differences in terrain of the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars, the north being very smooth while the south has an uneven, rough and cratered landscape. A collision hypothesis has been floating in the realm of theories for sometime but the impact crater was unable to be found until this most recent study of highly detailed images from the orbiting crafts. The impactor itself was huge, probably around 1,200 miles across, which by the way is bigger than Pluto, leaving a crater 5,300 miles wide. The event was so large that it completely resurfaced the entire northern hemisphere, at least according to this theory. This isn’t the last word on the mystery of the Mars landscape or on the impact theory but it certainly adds something interesting to the conversation. To read more on this visit the following link:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20080625.html

Nuclearbases from Space: A study from the Imperial College London has shown there to be nucleobases deemed very important for life as we know it to have originated in space. Research into a fragment of the Murchison meteorite which slammed into Australia nearly 40 years ago has shown there to be over 70 different amino acids inside, a few of them vitally important for life on Earth. Two of those are uracil and xanithine which are used in building genetic material; uracil is actually one of four bases for RNA. The study is not suggesting that all life originated from space, only that some of the base material is floating around in space, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t arise on Earth independently however. The importance of this is that we know the solar system was bombarded with material early in its history, so these kinds of molecules could have been carried to the surface of multiple planets in our solar system by the impactors, and that is exciting information. To view more on this story visit the following link: http://news.softpedia.com/news/DNA-and-RNA-Came-from-Space-88016.shtml

Dark Matter May Affect Stars Life Spans: Gianfranco Bertone is leading a team at the Institute of Astrophysics in France looking into the effect of dark matter on stellar evolution, particularly in population III stars. Population III stars are the first stars to be born in the Universe, some 100 million years after the big bang, they are thought to have been mostly super-giant stars, burning out their lives in a short time, but new research from Bertone and his team is suggesting that some of them may still inhabit the Universe, hidden inside dense clouds of dark matter at galactic centers. According to the study if a population III star was encompassed in very dense region of dark matter(which is non-baryonic matter, meaning not made of the usual atomic particles) then the dark matter could have started annihilating, providing energy for the stellar core and stopping the normal hydrogen fusion that usually drives stellar cycles. This is a very interesting idea because it means that not only do we possibly have a window into some of the earliest stars in the cosmos, but that some might still be around to discover. If discovered one of these primordial stars could be a treasure trove for data on dark matter and its interactions with normal matter in the Universe. To see more on this visit the following link: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/24/primordial-stars-frozen-indefinitely-by-dark-matter/