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On August 4, 2007, at 5:26 am, a NASA rover lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for space exploration on Mars. The Mars Phoenix landed May 25, 2008 and began to search the martian planet. By late July 2008, NASA announced that the Mars Phoenix had discovered water ice on Mars, a breakthrough in space exploration.
The Mars Phoenix Mission was led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona. Project Management of the mission was by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Spacecraft Development was by Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Climate was recorded by Canada's Meteorological Station, by scientists who came from the University of York, Dalhousie, and Alberta.
After settling on the North Pole of Mars, the robotic arm from the lander scraped a shallow trench in the soil exposing a shiny substance that was later proved to be water ice. Canada's Meteorological station recorded the daily weather, Mars' temperature and pressure, and probed clouds, fog and dust in the atmosphere. They concluded that it does snow on Mars.
The Mars Phoenix was sent in response to the Mars Odyssey's Orbiter discovery of the possibility of finding ice under the polar surface of Mars. Odyssey's sensors detected a gamma ray signature from hydrogen concentrated around the North region of Mars during its mission, so the Mars Phoenix was created to investigate. This time, the rover was specifically designed to measure volatiles (especially water) and complex organic molecules in the Arctic plains of Mars.
photo credit Nasa / Goddard Space Flight Center / Reto Stöckli