100- Add some new knowledge to the post, agee or disagree with a reason

90- Add new knowledge, agree or disagree with no reasons

80- Add new knowledge OR agree/disagree with  one reason

70- Agree or disagree with an unrelated reason.

60—–you need to review the climate material and try again!

List a specific evidence that supports idea of  global warming.( You should do some additional online research about the effects of global warming….hint…..look for evidence of climate change in a particular location that is related to warming of Earth).

Monday  5/24 Volcanism worksheet due tomorrow

 Tuesday 5/25  Working on Sea Floor Spreading and Continental Drift labs in class on Wed.- both due Thursday.

Wednesday 5/26    Same as above and review book questions

Thursday 5/27:  Review Book questions 

 Friday 5/28:    No school today!!!!!  Unit test on Tuesday for Plate Tectonics

ALL ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE THE NEXT DAY UNLESS NOTED

Science 6

We have Science every day this week .

Monday: 5/24   Mineral Lab questions are due Wednesday

Super Giant Field in the Appalachians?
A few years ago every geologist involved in Appalachian Basin oil and gas knew about the Devonian black shale called the Marcellus. Its black color made it easy to spot in the field and its slightly radioactive signature made it a very easy pick on a geophysical well log.

However, very few of these geologists were excited about the Marcellus Shale as a major source of natural gas. Wells drilled through it produced some gas but rarely in enormous quantity. Few if any in the natural gas industry suspected that the Marcellus might soon be a major contributor to the natural gas supply of the United States – large enough to be spoken of as a “super giant” gas field.

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Thickness map of the Marcellus Shale. Modified after: United States Geological Survey, Open-File Report 2006-1237, Assessment of Appalachian Basin oil and gas resources: Devonian Shale-Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System, by Robert Milici and Christopher Swezey. [3

Early Marcellus Estimates by USGS
As recently as 2002 the United States Geological Survey in its Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Appalachian Basin Province, calculated that the Marcellus Shale contained an estimated undiscovered resource of about 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas. [1] That’s a lot of gas but spread over the enormous geographic extent of the Marcellus it was not that much per acre.

The First Hints of Big Production
Range Resources – Appalachia, LLC may have started the Marcellus Shale gas play. In 2003 they drilled a Marcellus well in Washington County, Pennsylvania and found a promising flow of natural gas [2]. They experimented with drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods that worked in the Barnett Shale of Texas. Their first Marcellus gas production from the well began in 2005. Between then and the end of 2007 more than 375 gas wells with suspected Marcellus intent had been permitted in Pennsylvania [2].

Recent Surprise Estimates
In early 2008, Terry Englander, a geoscience professor at Pennsylvania State University, and Gary Lash, a geology professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, surprised everyone with estimates that the Marcellus might contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Using some of the same horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods that had previously been applied in the Barnett Shale of Texas, perhaps 10% of that gas (50 trillion cubic feet) might be recoverable. That volume of natural gas would be enough to supply the entire United States for about two years and have a wellhead value of about one trillion dollars! [5]

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This map shows the approximate depth to the base of the Marcellus Shale. It was prepared using the map by Robert Milici and Christopher Swezey above and adding depth-to-Marcellus contours published by Wallace de Witt and others, 1993, United States Department of Energy Report: The Atlas of Major Appalachian Gas Plays. [4

How Deep is the Marcellus Shale?
Throughout most of its extent, the Marcellus is nearly a mile or more below the surface. The map at right shows the depth of the Marcellus Shale. These great depths make the Marcellus Formation a very expensive target. Successful wells must yield large volumes of gas to pay for the drilling costs that can easily exceed a million dollars for a traditional vertical well and much more for a horizontal well with hydraulic fracturing.

Using the two maps together, some especially interesting areas can be seen. These are where thick Marcellus Shale can be drilled at minimum depths. Although this is a great oversimplification, it correlates with the heavy leasing activity that has occurred in parts of northern Pennsylvania and western New York.

Where is the Highest Production Potential?
Rock units are not homogeneous. The gas in the Marcellus Shale is a result of its contained organic content. Logic therefore suggests that the more organic material there is contained in the rock the greater its ability to yield gas. John Harper of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey suggests that the areas with the greatest production potential might be where the net thickness of organic-rich shale within the Marcellus Formation is greatest. A map showing this distribution for the state of Pennsylvania is shown at right. Northeastern Pennsylvania is where the thick organic-rich shale intervals are located.

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The stratigraphic nomenclature used for the rocks immediately above and below the Marcellus varies from one area to another. Information for Western Pennsylvania and Northwestern New York is shown above. Click the image to reveal nomenclature for other areas. Image by: Robert Milici and Christopher Swezey, 2006, Assessment of Appalachian Basin Oil and Gas Resources: Devonian Shale–Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System. Open-File Report Series 2006-1237. United States Geological Survey.[3

For new wells drilled with the new horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies the inital production can be much higher than what was seen in the old wells. Early production rates from some of the new wells has been over one million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The technology is so new that long term production data is not available. As with most gas wells, production rates will decline over time, however, a second hydraulic fracturing treatment could restimulate production.

Photomicrograph of a polished section of Marcellus Shale in reflected light. The gold particles are pyrite grains which are common in organic-rich rocks. The large brown elongated body is a compressed plant spore with a few pyrite grains in the central cavity. The remainder of the rock is a clay matrix with a heavy brown organic stain.The width of this image spans about 0.2 millimeters of the shale.

How Does the Gas Occur in the Rock?
Natural gas occurs within the Marcellus Shale in three ways: 1) within the pore spaces of the shale; 2) within vertical fractures (joints) that break through the shale; and, 3) adsorbed on mineral grains and organic material. Most of the recoverable gas is contained in the pore spaces. However, the gas has difficulty escaping through the pore spaces because they are very tiny and poorly connected.

Most historic wells in the Marcellus produced gas at a very slow rate because of the low permeability mentioned above. This is typical for a shale. However, some of the most successful historic wells in the Marcellus share a common characteristic: they intersect numerous fractures. These fractures allow the gas to flow through the rock unit and into the well bore. The fractures intersecting the well also intersect other fractures and those fractures intersect still more fractures. Thus, an extensive fracture network allows one well to drain gas from a very large volume of shale. A single well can recover gas from many acres of surrounding land.

Horizontal Drilling to Penetrate More Fractures
The fractures (also known as “joints”) in the Marcellus Shale are vertical. So, a vertical borehole would be expected to intersect very few of them. However, a horizontal well, drilled perpendicular to the most common fracture orientation should intersect a maximum number of fractures.

The diagram to the right illustrates the concept of a horizontal well. High yield wells in the Marcellus Shale have been built using the horizontal drilling technique. Some horizontal wells in the Marcellus Shale have initial flows that suggest that they are capable of yielding millions of cubic feet of gas per day, making them some of the most productive gas wells in the eastern United States. Although some experts are very optimistic on the long-term production rates of these wells, it is too early to determine their productive life or long-term yield.

The most promising wells drilled into the Marcellus employ two technologies that are relatively new to Appalachian Basin gas shale production. One is horizontal drilling, in which a vertical well is deviated to horizontal so that it will penetrate a maximum number of vertical rock fractures and penetrate a maximum distance of gas-bearing rock. The second is "hydrofracing" (or hydraulic fracturing). With this technique, a portion of the well is sealed off and water is pumped in to produce a pressure that is high enough to fracture the surrounding rock. The result is a highly fractured reservoir penetrated by a long length of well bore.

Increase the Number of Fractures
A second method is used to increase the productivity of a well. That is to increase the number of fractures in a well using a technique known as “hydraulic fracturing” or “hydrofracing”. This method uses high-pressure water or a gel to induce fractures in the rock surrounding the well bore.

Hydrofracing is done by sealing off a portion of the well and injecting water or gel under very high pressure into the isolated portion of the hole. The high pressure fractures the rock and pushes the fractures open.

To prevent the fractures from closing when the pressure is reduced several tons of sand or other “propant” is pumped down the well and into the pressurized portion of the hole. When the fracturing occurs millions of sand grains are forced into the fractures. If enough sand grains are trapped in the fracture it will be propped partially open when the pressure is reduced. This provides an improved permeability for the flow of gas to the well.

atural fractures "joints" in Devonian-age shale. This is a highly fracture shale.

Economic Significance of the Marcellus Shale Gas Field
The presence of an enormous volume of potentially recoverable gas in the eastern United States has a great economic significance. This will be some of the closest natural gas to the high population areas of New Jersey, New York and New England. This transportation advantage will give Marcellus gas a distinct advantage in the marketplace.

Gas produced from the shallower, western portion of the Marcellus extent (see map above) might be transported to cities in the central part of the United States. It should have a positive impact on the stability of natural gas supply of the surrounding region for at least several years if the resource estimate quoted above proves accurate.

Mineral Rights
Many landowners are being approached with offers to lease their land. The size of the signing bonuses that have been paid in transactions between informed buyers and informed sellers is directly related to two factors: 1) the level of uncertainty in the mind of the buyer, and 2) the number of other buyers competing to make the purchase. These factors have changed significantly in a very short time.

As recently as 2005 there was very little interest in leasing properties for Marcellus Shale gas production. The Marcellus was not considered to be an important gas resource and a technology for tapping it had not been demonstrated. At that time the level of uncertainty in the minds of the buyers was very high and the signing bonuses were a few dollars per acre.

When the potential of the Marcellus was first suspected in 2006 a small number of speculators began leasing land – paying risky signing bonuses that were sometimes as high as $100 per acre. In late 2007 signing bonuses of a few hundred dollars per acre were common. Then, as the technology was demonstrated and publicized signing bonuses began to rise rapidly. By early 2008 several wells with strong production rates were drilled, numerous investors began leasing and the signing bonuses rose from a few hundred dollars per acre up to over $2000 per acre for the most desirable properties.

If the results of current and future drilling activity do not match the expectations of companies paying for leases the amounts that they are willing to pay could drop rapidly.

Gas Royalties
Although signing bonuses generate an enormous amount of interest because they are guaranteed income, royalties can be significantly higher. A royalty is a share of a well’s income. The customary royalty rate is 12.5 percent of the value of gas produced by a well. Higher royalty rates are sometimes paid by aggressive buyers for highly desirable properties.

The royalties paid to eligible property owners from a well yielding over one million cubic feet of natural gas per day can be hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

If the Marcellus Shale holds up to the optimistic expectations of some natural gas experts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia could temporarily have an enormous boost in income that might be sustained for a few decades.

Natural Gas Drilling Activity
Several companies are actively drilling or leasing Marcellus Shale properties. Range Resources, North Coast Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chief Oil & Gas, East Resources , Fortuna Energy, Equitable Production Company, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation, Southwestern Energy Production Company, and Atlas Energy Resources are some of the companies involved.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says that drilling permits are up strongly since 2005 and much of the activity increase can be attributed to wells targeting the Marcellus shale. Some of the new wells appear capable of yielding millions of cubic feet per day and that has companies working hard to acquire leases on desirable properties and complete new wells.

Pipelines and Right-of-Ways
Hundreds of thousands of acres above the Marcellus Shale have been leased with the intent of drilling wells for natural gas. However, most of the leased properties are not adjacent to a natural gas pipeline. The total natural gas pipeline capacity currently available is a tiny fraction of what will be needed.

Several new pipelines must be built to transport millions of cubic feet of natural gas per day to major markets. In addition, thousands of miles of natural gas gathering systems must be built to connect individual wells to the major pipelines.

Many property owners will be asked to sign right-of-way agreements that will allow natural gas pipelines and gathering systems to be built across their land. It the property owner is not associated with the gas production there could be compensation for granting the right-of-way. Payments could be as low as a few dollars per linear foot in rural areas to over $100 per foot in urban areas.

Other Gas Shales in the United States
The events described above are not unique to the northeastern United States or the Marcellus Shale. The horizontal drilling and hydrofracing technologies were perfected for shale reservoirs a few years ago in the Barnett Shale of Texas. The technology was then applied in other areas such as the Fayetteville Shale of northcentral Arkansas, the Haynesville Shale of northwestern Louisiana, and the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachians. These are just a few of several unconventional gas plays now happening in the United States and Canada. Similar organic shale deposits in other parts of the world might also produce gas as use of the new technologies spread.

Information Sources

[1] Milici, Rober C., and others (2002). USGS Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Appalachian Basin Province, 2002. Fact Sheet 009-03. United States Geological Survey.

[2] Harper, John A. (2008). The Marcellus Shale – An Old “New” Gas Reservoir in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Geology, Volume 38, Number 1. Pennsylvania Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey.

[3] Milici, Robert C.; Swezey, Christopher S. (2006). Assessment of Appalachian Basin Oil and Gas Resources: Devonian Shale–Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System. Open-File Report Series 2006-1237. United States Geological Survey.

[4] de Witt, Wallace, and others (1993) Principal Oil and Gas Plays in the Appalachian Basin (Province 131). U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1839-I, 37 p.

[5] Engelder, Terry and Lash, Gary (2008). Unconventional Natural Gas Reservoir Could Boost U.S. Supply. Penn State Live.

[6] Piotrowski, R. G., and Harper, J. A., (1979). Black shale and sandstone facies of the Devonian “Catskill” clastic wedge in the subsurface of western Pennsylvania. Eastern Gas Shales Project, EGSP Series 13, 40 p. United States Department of Energy.

Construction workers digging at ground zero have uncovered a 40-foot pothole and other features carved by glaciers about 20,000 years ago.

Unearthing these glacial features has been critical in preparing the foundation for Tower 4 of the new World Trade Center, being built by Silverstein Properties at the southeast corner of the site. Engineers need a clear understanding of the contours of the rock.

“You want to make sure you’re not perching something on a ledge,” said Anthony Pontecorvo, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, which is working on the project.

The bedrock could not be mapped until the soil was removed and the surface was fully exposed. But besides being an engineering necessity, the unearthing of geological features has offered scientists a rare window into the deep past.

“There are areas in local parks that have small vertical potholes exposed,” Cheryl J. Moss, the senior geologist at Mueser Rutledge, told The New York Times. “But I’m not aware of anything in the city with a whole, self-contained depression on this scale.”

But geology at the trade center site must take a back seat to construction. The pothole and other features are either being covered, filled in or blasted away.

“It’s nice to look at,” said Robert B. Reina, a supervising structural engineer at Mueser Rutledge, “but it’s all got to go.”

Comments

You should use different examples than those previously posted.

Due: Friday morning, Sept. 26.

What effect do you have on Earth systems? Which sphere do you live on and what are some ways you change the spheres? Are these behaviors beneficial or detrimental to Earth?

Write a response to this post that includes all parts of the question. Read the previous posts and tell if you agree or disagree with previous student responses.

It’s relatively easy to track the history of animal life, as animals are often macroscopic and build things like shells and bone. But about 70 percent of the history of life on earth appears to have taken place before animals were on the scene, meaning fossils can only tell a partial story. At the recent evolution symposium hosted by Rockefeller University, Roger Buick spoke about trying to reconstruct the history of the time when Bacteria and Archaea ruled the earth. Separately, Andrew Knoll discussed his attempts to use geology to try to understand the conditions that allowed animal life to bring an end to that era.

Early signs of life

Buick introduced his own work by taking the audience on a quick tour of what we know about the earliest life on earth. This work is severely limited by the fact that there are only about four places on earth with rocks older than 3 Gigayears (Gyrs, meaning 3 billion years). Still, the old rocks have a variety of evidence that suggest an early origin of life. The oldest reported microfossils of possible cellular imprints date to 3.45 Gyrs, but Buick thinks those are younger contaminants. Filaments with traces of organics appear at 3.2 Gyrs, but these have no clear cellularity. As far as microfossils go, the best evidence is at 2.6 Gyrs, where South African samples show clear cellularity and behavior.

Early stromatolites?

The South African evidence comes in the form of a stromatolite, which is a bacterial community that traps sediment, creating recognizable formations. There are actually older stromatolites; chemical evidence goes back to 3.5 Gyrs, while those with signs of cellularity date to 2.72 Gyrs. The chemical environment of these formations was very nutrient poor, indicating that photosynthesis was probably already happening.

Buick then moved on to work he has done with biomarkers, organic molecules that indicate living sources, and may even tell us something about the organism; for example, various forms of cholesterol are only produced by Eukaryotes. The big problem is that samples are prone to contamination, and any high temperatures in the geologic past will kill the chemicals. Nevertheless, there’s evidence that all three branches of life were present at 2.69 Gyrs, while another sample from 2.45 Gyrs contained hopanes from cyanobacteria and steranes from Eukaryotes.

Other evidence comes from isotope ratios, as living creatures tend to prefer the lighter isotopes of carbon and sulfur, which require less energy to shuffle around. The type of molecule can also tell us something about the organisms—for example, methane derivatives with isotope biases point to the existence of Archaeal methanogens. Here, there are a number of samples that are significantly older than 3 Gyrs that show signs of bias towards lighter forms of carbon. Unfortunately, most of these have issues with questionable ages, lack of a nonliving control sample, etc. But Buick hinted that some new samples were on the verge of being published, so further news on the timing of early life may be in the works.
Geological constraints on life

If Buick’s talk was about searching through geology for signs of the earliest life, Andrew Knoll’s talk turned that approach on its head, as he focused on how exploring geology can tell us what the early environment was like, and thus what selective pressures life faced. In his view, we need this information to make sense out major events in evolution.

Knoll focused on the transition from the Archaean ocean, which was anoxic, to the Phanerozoic ocean, where oxygen was present in the deep sediments of the Cambrian. In between, there was a billion-year long intermediate state with oxygenated surface waters and a sulfur-rich deep ocean. He termed this period the planet’s middle age, where oxygenation of the deep ocean produced sulfate ions, rather than molecular oxygen. Over this time, microbial life was flourishing, with reefs of organisms that covered areas the size of several city blocks. By 1.25 Gyrs ago, microfossils reveal Eukaryotes proliferating, both as single-celled protists and in filamentous red algae. 50 million years later, the first skeletal elements deposited by single cells begin to appear.

According to Knoll, this microbial paradise comes to an abrupt end at the start of the Ediacaran, 580 million years ago. At that point, full oxidation reached the deep oceans, and the sulfidic dominated chemistry disappeared. Coincident with this is the dominance of algae and the appearance of multicellular sea weeds. Multicellular animal life quickly followed. For Knoll, the geology tells a simply story: availability of oxygen is the key for the evolution of multicellular life. Without a fully oxygenated ocean, frequent incursions of the sulfidic deep water into the shallows kept a lid on the expansion of Eukaryotic life.

He used this to launch into a discussion of how the oxygen levels also created a selective pressures on multicellular life. Animal cells, he notes, didn’t invent multiple cell types, as many single-celled creatures have distinct developmental stages. What the oxygenation of the oceans allowed were colonial creatures where several of these developmental stages could coexist without running into serious diffusion issues. Based on modern microbial evidence, he argued that the first developmental signals were nutritional, and that these were adapted to police against spontaneous conversion of the entire community. The evolution of development, in Knoll’s view, was primarily focused on finding ways of overcoming the problem of diffusing oxygen around larger and larger body plans.

So, geological knowledge is having a productive conversation with evolution. Buick’s work shows us that that we can tease evidence of early life and its identity out of geological samples, while Knoll argued that paying attention to geology can tell us about the selective pressures those creatures faced.

The Phoenix lander has sent back new pictures from the arctic circle of Mars, showing for the first time the spot where it will dig through the Red Planet’s dusty surface looking for water and assess conditions for life.

It landed at the edge of a massive crater so large that it could fit 11 Wembley stadiums inside it. The half-ton craft – the size of a small pick-up truck – will scoop up samples of frozen soil from near the six-mile wide crater for analysis by its instruments.
“This is a place we’re going to get to know very well over the next three months,” the mission’s chief scientist, Peter Smith, said in describing the 30-mile wide valley and small hills on the horizon.
Phoenix landed in a broad shallow valley close to the North Pole. The site – in an area called Green Valley of Vastitas Borealis – was picked because it is free of large rocks which could have caused havoc on landing.
mars
The Lander ended its 422million-mile journey in a crater on Mars
Mission managers said Phoenix touched gently down on Mars on Sunday after a 10-month, 420 million-mile (676 million-km) journey from Earth.
It reached the outer layer of Mars’s thin atmosphere travelling at 12,700mph – six times faster than a speeding bullet. Within seven minutes it had used its heat shield, parachute and then finally its rocket thrusters to slow down to just 5mph when it landed with its three legs unfurled.
Scientists said the probe had come through its landing in good shape, though they were still grappling with a pair of technical glitches.
mars
A US flag and a DVD containing a message for future explorers of Mars has been left on the surface
mars
The polygonal pattern in the ground near NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander could indicate ice under the surface
The more serious of those involved Phoenix’s inability to communicate with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which, along with the Odyssey spacecraft, must relay commands and data back to Earth, since the lander cannot communicate directly with its home planet.
Fuk Li, manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said the problem was a UHF radio on the orbiter, which he said appeared to have shut down after an unknown “transient event” in space.
Li said the Phoenix team was working to re-establish communications and did not expect the mission to be compromised because the lander was still in contact with Odyssey.
“We would just have to ask Odyssey to work harder,” Li said.
Phoenix also had trouble fully retracing a covering for its robotic arm, although managers said it appeared the arm would be able to fully function.
Mars
The image shows the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars and the distant horizon
Phoenix is the first spacecraft to reach a polar region of Mars. Problems during descent doomed NASA’s first polar lander in 1999.
Over the next three months, scientists want to bore into the ground and study water and soil samples to determine if conditions were suitable to support life. In addition to determining if the water was ever liquid, scientists want to find out if it holds any organic matter.
The Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s conducted similar tests on surface soils. Scientists later determined solar radiation flowing through the planet’s thin atmosphere creates a sterile environment as it bombards the ground.
Subsurface conditions, however, might provide habitats for microbes and bacterial life to flourish on Mars, as they do in extreme environments on Earth.
Mr Smith said weather information gathered by the mission’s Canadian team showed temperatures ranged between minus 22 degrees and minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.

The flight of the Phoenix
For the past decade, NASA has been searching for signs of past water on Mars with a fleet of orbiters and a pair of rovers on the ground.
Past explorations have shown vast canyons and shallow dried lakes, suggesting that water flowed on the surface billions of years ago. Some scientists suspect that Mars might once have been home to primitive bacterial life.
They believe bacterial spores could lie dormant in cold, dry and airless conditions for millions of years – and could be woken up given the right conditions.
The detection of subsurface frozen water in 2002 by Mars Odyssey prompted scientists to propose the Phoenix mission.
Nasa and British scientists involved in the mission say the hexagonal marks on the surface could be a sign that ice lies a few inches beneath the Phoenix’s feet – and that they have picked the perfect spot.
A team from Imperial College London contributed to Phoenix, creating ten tiny silicon slides designed to hold on to grains of soil for the two onboard microscopes.
Dr Tom Pike, of the college, said his team was ‘tremendously exhilarated’. He added: ‘A good few tears have been shed. It has been a long journey for all of us – some people including myself have spent more than a decade preparing for this.’
Over the next three months Phoenix will be controlled remotely from Earth. Nasa scientists will move its robotic arm around the craft to find promising sites for digging.
Because of the 15-minute time delay in sending radio instructions to Mars, however, much of its onboard laboratory is programmed to run automatically without needing step by step guidance from mission control.
The mission is due to last 92 days. After that, the craft’s solar panels are in danger of being covered with dust and Phoenix could run out of power.
It might also struggle to cope with the onset of winter in a few months and the much lower temperatures. However, Nasa will try to keep the mission going as long as it can.

Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. However, discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002 showed large amounts of subsurface water ice. The Phoenix Lander targets this region.

Phoenix will probe the history of liquid water that may have existed in the arctic as recently as 100,000 years ago. Evidence from other missions suggest that water once flowed in canyons. It is important because all known life forms require it to survive. Chemical experiments will assess the soil’s composition of lifegiving elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and hydrogen.

Certain bacterial spores lie dormant in cold, dry and airless conditions for millions of years and become activated in favourable conditions.
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Such dormant microbial colonies may exist in the Martian arctic.