Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.
Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits and observing snow descending from clouds.
Image: This image, taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on the 49th Martian day of the mission, shows the silver colored rasp protruding from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Robotic Arm scoop. The scoop is inverted and the rasp is pointing up. The Robotic Arm Camera is pointed toward the ground.
Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
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