Antarctic Expedition Prepared Researchers For Mars Project![]() Several members of the science team for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission traveled to Antarctica for three weeks in December 2007 and January 2008 for experiments to help them interpret results from Mars. In this image, Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith walks through Beacon Valley, which is one of the most Mars-like places on Earth. Like the Phoenix landing site on far-northern Mars, Beacon Valley has a water-ice table beneath the surface and soil above the ice that rarely, if ever, gets warm enough for ice to melt. Image credit: NASA They used duplicates of some of the Phoenix spacecraft's instruments, plus other methods, in the Antarctic Dry Valleys where breaks in the south polar ice sheet leave windswept rocky terrain exposed. Their two-week expedition, overlapping New Year's Day 2008, was part of the International Polar Year, a multipronged scientific program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009. "We wanted to gain experience with our Phoenix instruments in one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth," said Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. She is the project scientist for Phoenix and principal investigator for the Antarctic Dry Valleys expedition, though pregnancy kept her from making the trip to Antarctica. Like the Martian plain where Phoenix landed, the Antarctic Dry Valleys have permafrost and experience cycles of expansion and contraction that have formed the terrain into a pattern of polygons slightly higher at the centers than at the edges. Some of the valleys visited by the expedition, such as University Valley, even have Mars-like "dry" permafrost, where the soil above the ice table never warms above freezing. This makes it even more Mars-like than "wet" permafrost in Earth's Arctic and in lower-elevation dry valleys in Antarctica, where ice in the upper layer of soil thaws in the summer. ![]() Beacon Valley in Antarctica provides one of the best sites on Earth for environmental conditions comparable to high-latitude regions of Mars. Like the landing site of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, Beacon Valley has a water-ice table beneath the surface and dry soil above the ice that rarely, if ever, gets warm enough for ice to melt. Members of the science team for the Phoenix mission took instruments for Beacon Valley during a three-week expedition in December 2007 and January 2008. The results have helped them understand and interpret results from the Phoenix mission. In this image, expedition member Doug Ming of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, uses a field version of an X-ray diffraction and fluorescence instrument called CheMin, part of the science payload for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission slated for launch in 2011. Image Credit: NASA Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, Medford, Mass., took a working copy of the Phoenix lander's wet chemistry laboratory experiment. He collected soil samples from different depths and used that instrument to assess the concentrations of many soluble nutrients, such as calcium, magnesium and potassium. He also used other methods back at his lab to check for the same ingredients and found essentially the same concentrations. "This helps us validate the results from the wet chemistry laboratory, and gives us more confidence in the data we obtained from Mars," Kounaves said. The wet chemistry laboratory was one of the tools Phoenix carried for investigating whether the permafrost environment on Mars has ever offered a favorable chemical environment for microbial life. It found several soluble soil nutrients in concentrations comparable to fertile soils on Earth. That's one plus for habitability. Other key factors in evaluating the site's habitability include whether the water-ice ever thaws enough to become biologically available, whether the site has a supply of carbon-based chemicals that are building blocks for life, and whether the site has an energy source organisms could use. ![]() Broad daylight at midnight illuminates a camp of researchers in Antarctica's Beacon Valley in January 2008. Scientists affiliated with NASA Phoenix Mars Lander mission traveled to the site and other Antarctic valleys for studies that aided analysis of data they later got from Mars. They used field versions of instruments on Phoenix, plus other methods, to investigate an environment that, like the Phoenix landing site, has dry soil year-round above an underground layer of water ice. Phoenix landed on far-northern Mars on May 25, 2008, which was late spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars. For most of the three-month prime mission following the landing, the lander received round-the-clock sunshine. In Antarctica as at the Phoenix site, winter includes a long period with no direct sunshine at all. Image Credit: NASA Doug Ming of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, brought back to Houston soil samples from different depths of about a dozen trenches dug in Antarctic Dry Valleys. Some of the samples will be analyzed in an engineering model of the Mars lander's oven instrument that heats samples and identifies the volatile gases driven off by the heating. This instrument on Phoenix served to study the minerals in the soil and check for carbon-containing organic compounds. "We've kept the samples frozen and sterile since they were collected," Ming said. The analysis continues. Phoenix used a fork-like probe, inserted into Martian soil, to study changes in the soil's humidity, electrical and thermal properties. Aaron Zent, of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., brought one of these thermal and electroconductivity probes to the Antarctic Dry Valleys. "You have to use the probe in undisturbed soil, not a soil sample that you've dug up," Zent said. "We got some measurements that demonstrated the functionality of the instrument." The instrument, which was operating at temperatures some 20 Celsius degrees (36 Fahrenheit degrees) warmer than the highest temperatures Phoenix experienced on Mars, also found changes in soil electrical properties that reflected small changes in soil water over the course of the Antarctic day. Zent is using weather records from the dry valleys, similar to the temperature and humidity data from the conductivity probe, to refine models of the Antarctic and Martian climates and the presence of thin films of unfrozen water in the soil. ![]() Members of the science team for the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander mission traveled to valleys in Antarctica in December 2007 and January 2008 for ice-and-soil studies that aided analysis of the data they got from Mars later in 2008. Here, four of the expedition members scout out field sites in Antarctica's Beacon Valley, one of the most Mars-like places on Earth. From left: Aaron Zent, of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Chris McKay, also of NASA Ames; Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, Tucson; and Doug Ming, of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston. Cliffs of light-toned sandstone and dark-toned dolerite rise above the valley floor, with the polar plateau overtopping the cliffs further in the background. Image Credit: NASA The expedition included two biologists -- Chris McKay of NASA Ames Research Center, and Susanne Douglas of JPL. Among other studies in the Antarctic Valleys, the team checked whether any microbes live close to the ice in the dry permafrost of University Valley, which had never been done before. The results of these studies, still in review, could add new understanding of the Earth's own extreme environments. If living microbes are found in the dry permafrost, this would bring us one step closer to understanding the potential habitability on Mars. "There's no other place on Earth that combines the dryness and the coldness of the Antarctic Dry Valleys, a combination that presents a difficult challenge to life," Douglas said. For a colder and drier place, see Mars. ![]() |
THE MISSIONThe University of Arizona is honored to be the first public university to lead a mission to Mars. The Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled to land May 25, 2008, is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program. Learn More![]() ![]() ![]() |