June 28, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 23, 1429

LOS ANGELES: The first chemistry results from Mars’ northern plain reveal an environment more hospitable to life than some scientists had predicted, one that might allow future colonists to grow crops as familiar on Earth as asparagus and green beans.

Strawberries, though, might be tougher, Phoenix mission scientists said on Thursday.

“We’re flabbergasted by this data,” said Sam Kounaves, the lead scientist on the wet chemistry experiment for the Phoenix spacecraft, which landed on Mars on May 25. “We’ve found nutrients that could support life.”

A sample of soil about the size of a sugar cube was delivered to the lab by the lander’s nearly eight foot long robotic arm and mixed with water brought from Earth. Analysis shows that the soil is alkaline, with a pH between 8 and 9, Kounaves said. This came as something of a surprise, at least to the many scientists who have argued that Martian soil was likely too acidic to support life.

With that level of alkalinity, “you might be able to grow asparagus very well”, Kounaves said. Strawberries, on the other hand, require more acidic soils. The test also turned up magnesium, sodium, potassium, and chloride, all of which are useful in organic processes.

The test did not turn up the prize that the $420 million mission was sent to find: complex organics that would indicate Mars once was, or still might be, habitable. Organic compounds, made up of carbon in combination with nitrogen, hydrogen and other elements, are necessary to build the elaborate chemical scaffolding of life, at least as we know it on Earth.

Further, even though the soil chemistry would provide some nutrients for life, any future crops would have to be grown underground, because the meager Martian atmosphere lets in too much of the sun’s destructive ultraviolet rays. The scientific team from the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., emphasized that these results represent an analysis of a single piece of a Martian landscape that is the size of the Earth’s land area.

“A lot of people predicted the soil would be acidic,” Kounaves added. “We’re showing at this location it appears to be alkaline. But we’re only looking at a tiny area.”

Still, the scientists said on Thursday in a briefing, the early results are encouraging.

“There’s nothing about (the soil) that would preclude life,” Kounaves said. “Some types of life would be happy to live in these soils.” In fact, the Martian soil looks very similar to soils on Earth, only without the organics, he said.

Fuller answers to the habitability question are expected from Phoenix’s other major laboratory, the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, which contains eight tiny ovens to “bake and sniff” the soils, as well as the ice that is lying only inches beneath the lander.

Scientists said they had received the results from cooking the first soil sample from TEGA up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Small amounts of carbon dioxide and water were released, according to Bill Boynton, the lead scientist for the instrument.

Neither finding was surprising. The Martian atmosphere is mostly made up of carbon dioxide. The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which have been rolling around the planet’s equatorial regions since 2004, found evidence of ancient pools or seas of standing water.

Sometime in the next few weeks of the three-month mission, the scientific team will attempt to bore into the hard-as-cement ice layer. After breaking off shards of the ice, the robotic arm will try to inject it into TEGA’s ovens.

The instrument continues to be balky, however. First, the clumpy soil proved to be harder than expected to shake into the tiny ovens. Most recently, the sliding doors above two of the ovens have failed to open all the way. Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein said engineers have been working on solutions. —Dawn/ The LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times