"White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life" - something beyond the water results.

[Robert Clark]

Just saw this article on the Aviation Week site:

White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life.
Aug 1, 2008
By Craig Covault
"The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an
announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning
the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week &
Space Technology.
"Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or
past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability--the
"potential" for Mars to support life--at the Phoenix arctic landing
site, sources say.
"The data are much more complex than results related NASA's July 31
announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at
the site."
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/WH08018.xml&headline=White%20House%20Briefed%20On%20Potential%20For%20Mars%20Life&channel=space

This apparently has to do with the MECA instrument, not the TEGA
instrument used to detect water/ice at the Phoenix site.
The article says it is not organics, nor actual bacteria which the
optical microscope in MECA might be able to detect.
Some guesses: maybe using the microscope, MECA was able to find clays.
Or perhaps it was able to detect carbonates in significant amounts.
Both TES from orbit and mini-TES on the rovers though have already
detected carbonates in small amounts as dust on the surface.
MECA can also detect nitrates and dissolved oxygen, both of which
might be supportive of habitability.

A summary of the capabilities of the MECA instrument on Phoenix:

THE 2007 PHOENIX MARS SCOUT MECA WET CHEMISTRY LABORATORY.
http://astrobiotech.arc.nasa.gov/abstracts/abstract_pdfs/Kounaves8.pdf

Bob Clark

[Uncle Al]

Robert Clark wrote:
>
> Just saw this article on the Aviation Week site:
>
> White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life.

[snip cheap propagandistic swill]

Mars Wants Earth Women. Laura Bush packs her vibrators and
volunteers, "it can't be worse than Crawford."

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2

[BradGuth]

Meanwhile, there's not one actual count of any ppb worth of h2o via
our spendy and more than high tech mass spectrometer.

Is the instrument broken?

~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth