Flashback 2008: World-Class Astrobiologist Says “NASA’s Hiding Current Life on Mars!”

“We’re flabbergasted by this data,… We’ve found nutrients that could support life … you might be able to grow asparagus very well [on Mars]”

• World-Class Astrobiologist Says “NASA’s Hiding Current  Life on Mars!” 
  by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara, http://www.enterprisemission.com/
  Just a few weeks ago (May 25th …), NASA landed its latest unmanned spacecraft — the Phoenix Mission — on the surface of the planet Mars, this time near the Red Planet’s North Pole (below).
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  The name “Phoenix” covers a host of metaphorical allusions familiar to this readership; the NASA Phoenix Mission (which now officially ends with the coming of Martian Winter in Mars’ Northern Hemisphere, on September 30, 2008) has two official goals:
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  “… to study the history of water and [the] habitability potential in the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil ….”
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  Note that this latest NASA mission was NOT (again!) specifically equipped “to search for life on Mars,” but only conditions “favorable for life.”
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  To that end, the Phoenix lander carries a complement of six scientific instruments — ranging from two digital color cameras (one in stereo), to a robotic sampler arm (below) — the latter designed for digging in the soil and conveying samples of that soil to two of those six instruments, the ones involving detailed chemical analysis ….
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  Unfortunately (by accident … design?), these two instruments cannot directly sense the presence of such potental Martian life forms in that soil (with one potential caveat …), but only the chemical prerequisites of such potential life … and …some of itscalculatedby-products– should they currently exist.
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  The “caveat” is the presence of a high-powered microscope (one of two on-board, actually – see image, below) — this one associated with the “wet chemistry” experiment (known as “MECA”); by use of this powerful optical microscope, if there were living bacterial or microbial life forms present in the sampled Martian soil, they could visually be seen … especially … if they moved between successive downlinked images!
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  (Displayed below are several small sand particles imaged by the microscope, after the initial soil collection for the MECA.)
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  Of the aforementioned “prerequisites” for Martian life forms … the one that Phoenix is most interested in is water.
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  Thus, it was with some fanfare that NASA, on July 31, 2008, officially announced that Phoenix had finally, chemically, detected liquid water in its Martian arctic soils (as melted ice …) — making this, at least, the fifth time that “detection of water on Mars” has been officially announced by NASA!
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  This occasion, however, was quite different:
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  A Phoenix lander chemistry instrument (called “TEGA”) physically “tasted” this crucial Martian water — leaving no doubt as to its presence; previous NASA “water announcements” had been based on remote sensing — from a variety of spacecraft photographs of Mars, taken from high orbit — images which present a great diversity of visual circumstantial evidence for the former existence of “a great flood of running on water on the Planet Mars” … but not “when” it might have been there.
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  The TEGA insituwater measurements left no doubt: there is a vast amount of frozen water in the arctic latitudes on Mars … right NOW.
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  Thus, the first major “life question” that Phoenix so elegantly answered was confirmation of the existence of current water in the soil — which, of course, could then be used by any current Martian microbes that might be living in that soil!
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  With reference to the “habitability” part of Phoenix’ scientific mandate, NASA had made an earlier announcement (even before its confirmation of the water …) on June 27, 2008, regarding the nature of the soil itself … retrieved from one of its excavated trenches and analyzed by the on-board MECA instrument (the white flecks visible at the bottom of those trenches — below — are exposed layers of frozen Martian ice lying just beneath the surface soils.)
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  To quote the NASA scientist conducting this first, extremely provocative “Martian arctic soil habitability analysis”:
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  ““We’re flabbergasted by this data,” said Sam Kounaves, the lead scientist for the wet chemistry experiment on the Phoenix spacecraft, which landed May 25 on Mars. “We’ve found nutrients that could support life” [emphasis added] ….”
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  This was then followed by my (Hoagland’s) favorite all-time “Martian” quote:
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  “… you might be able to grow asparagus very well [on Mars],” Kounaves said [emphasis added].
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  However, one day following the release of the Phoenix water confirmation, on July 31st, rumors began to circulate “… NASA is holding something back.” Craig Covault, Senior Editor of “AvWeek” (Aviation Week and Space Technology — the “bible” of the aerospace industry) reported in an August 1 story:
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  read more!

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