Phoenix Stands in Mars' 'Most Habitable Zone'

According to the latest researches coming in from NASA, the Phoenix Mars Lander may have descended right in the middle of a terrain that is extremely microbe-friendly. The most recent investigations seem to hint at the fact that the entire region, just below the planet's North Pole, is or was able to sustain life as we know it. There are even some mission experts who say that liquid water has been spotted on the craft's “legs,” and water is the key factor in the development of life.

In four papers submitted for review and publication in several scientific journals, experts in charge of the mission and researchers analyzing the data beamed back by Phoenix's instruments say that there are numerous factors to support the idea that the region where the craft landed was or may still be home to a number of microbe species. NASA's Ames Research Center scientist Carol Stoker, who is also a co-investigator for the Phoenix science team, has created a “habitability index,” a formula similar to Drake's equation on determining the possibility of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the Universe.

“What you see is that Phoenix comes down as a clear winner – a much, much higher habitability index than any of the other sites. The Phoenix landing site is the most habitable zone of any location we have ever visited on Mars,” Stoker told at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held last week in Woodlands, Texas.

“We have lots of microbes out there that can do things (...) eat rock and release from it stuff that they need. We've got bunches of checkmarks in really good places. I think Phoenix really did expand the possibility for serious consideration of looking for past and maybe even present life on Mars (...), but it's still a work in progress,” Suzanne Young, a Tufts University researcher and a member of the team analyzing the data beamed back by the Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument, added.

“We will try to get it back in October, but the chances are poor. However, it is known as the Phoenix mission and we do have a chance. We may be back,” the principal investigator of the Phoenix mission, University of Arizona in Tucson (UAT) expert Peter Smith, shared. He argued that the rough Martian winter had disrupted all communications between Earth and the robot, but that there was a slim possibility that the connection could be restored in October.

“There are things we couldn't do. There are things we didn't do. There are things that serendipity could have delivered to us and didn't. But we have not found any impossibilities (...) we've not found anything that's a no. And we have added a lot to the possibility – and so more missions are needed. We need to go deeper (...), we need to go back,” Young concluded.