Blue Sky On Mars

Well, OK, that's a stretch, but there is water, according to the latest Phoenix results:

"We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William V. Boynton, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and the lead scientist for the instrument that detected the water, said at a news conference on Thursday. "And I'd like to say, from my standpoint, it tastes very fine."

No word yet on whether they've managed to figure out how to turn on the alien atmosphere-generating machine. That'll probably have to wait for the next mission.

Update: Here's a bonus link to the NOVA ScienceNow piece on Phoenix that aired the other night. Via Phoenix Lander on Facebook, of all things...

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Phoenix is a disaster. Engineering was done by a chimp, results are specious; the horror will mercifully freeze to death before its PERT chart is half exhausted. "NASA TAKES PICTURES!"

Mars is Nunavut without alcoholism.

+10 for the Matthew Sweet reference.

I am curious. Since nitrogen is almost always in the form of a diatomic gas, where is the N2 on Venus or Mars? Can anybody explain the nearly complete lack of it?