The Phoenix Mars Lander was expected to work for three months, but has passed the four-month mark. That's fortunate for us, because the lander has observed snow falling in the Martian atmosphere!
The Martian winter is approaching, and soon there will be inadequate sunlight to power the lander. Link
Using lidar (analogous to radar, with pulses of laser light standing in for radio waves), Phoenix picked up signs of snow drifting down from clouds some 2.5 miles (four kilometers) overhead. It has not been seen reaching the Martian surface; it appears to vaporize before landfall.
"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," James Whiteway of York University in Toronto said in a statement. Whiteway is lead scientist for Phoenix's Meteorological Station (MET), the Canadian Space Agency's contribution to the mission. He added that the MET team will now seek to discover "signs that the snow may even reach the ground."
The Martian winter is approaching, and soon there will be inadequate sunlight to power the lander. Link
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It would be cool if the lander powers up again at martian springtime.
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i think it's nice to know that water is found! and not onlyin ice form but that there is even a weather system in place :)
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There's no misery quite as miserable as running out of gas on a cold snowy Mars night. Poor Phoenix.
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i'm glad they found SOMETHING for all our tax dollars. of course, they could have found snow in Michigan.
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Water ice, now snow? I think it is only a matter of time before some kind of critter is found, however microscopic it may be. Whether or not NASA lets us know about it is another matter, however.
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