In The Field

Phoenix landing: First ice?

Phoenix scientists may have taken their first glimpse of Martian ice. In order to see underneath the lander — an area likely blasted free of thin soil by the landing retrorockets — missions scientists had to use the camera on the end of the robotic arm. A picture returned last night shows a series of three tabular surfaces (upper middle in the image here). “They could be exposures of ice, or they could be exposures of rock,” said Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and lead for the robotic arm, at today’s press conference. “What we have 

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