WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, the U.S. space agency NASA announced on Monday.

    A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars, detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

    "Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. "We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground."

    In the meantime, spacecraft soil tests experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.

    Phoenix experiments also yielded clues pointing to calcium carbonate, the main composition of chalk, and particles that could be clay. Most carbonates and clays on Earth form only in the presence of liquid water.

    "We are still collecting data and have lots of analysis ahead, but we are making good progress on the big questions we set out for ourselves," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith.

    Since landing on May 25, Phoenix already has confirmed that a hard subsurface layer at its far-northern site contains water-ice.

    Determining whether that ice ever thaws would help answer whether the environment there has been favorable for life, a key aim of the mission.

    The Phoenix mission, originally planned for three months on Mars, now is in its fifth month. However, it faces a decline in solar energy that is expected to curtail and then end the lander's activities before the end of the year.

U.S. scientists confirm water on Mars

A full circle panoramic view of Mars taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is shown in this undated handout photo released to Reuters July 31, 2008. NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Mission scientists of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander reported on Thursday that an instrument aboard the spacecraft has identified water in a soil sample.

    The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples. Full story

Could Red Planet be capable of sustaining life?

Martian ice melts in this combination photo taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on June 15 and 18, 2008, in this handout image released by NASA June 20, 2008. A trench dug by Phoenix with its robotic arm at the arctic circle of Mars shows dice-sized chunks of white material that are seen to melt away over the course of several days. The presence of water on Mars is crucial because it is a key to the question of whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, exists or has ever existed on Mars. On Earth, water is a necessary ingredient for life. (Xinhua/Reuters/NASA Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, June 23 (Xinhuanet) -- NASA's Phoenix Mars lander uncovered last week what scientists believe is ice layer some 5 centimeters below the surface of the alien rust-coloured planet, raising hope that some exotic life may emerge in the frigid arctic plains of the Red Planet.

    After 20 days of scratching its way through the Martian top soil, the Phoenix uncovered a bright white layer just two inches below the surface. Full story

Phoenix lander gets close-up look at Mars dirt 

The optical microscope on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows soil sprinkled from the lander's robot arm scoop onto a silicone substrate in this handout image released on June 13, 2008. This is the first sample collected and delivered for instrumental analysis onboard a planetary lander since NASA's Viking Mars missions of the 1970s. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    WASHINGTON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- New observations from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander provided the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale, the mission science team reported on Friday.

    In the past two days, two instruments on the lander deck -- a microscope and a bake-and-sniff analyzer -- have begun inspecting soil samples delivered by the scoop on Phoenix's Robotic Arm. Full story

View from the Surface Stereo Imager on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows the first impression dubbed Yeti and shaped like a wide footprint -- made on the Martian soil by the robotic arm scoop on Sol 6, the sixth Martian day of the mission, (May 31, 2008). Touching the ground is the first step toward scooping up soil and ice and delivering the samples to the lander's onboard experiments.  (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

NASA's Mars lander delivers 1st soil sample to microscope 　

    

A white layer visible where the Phoenix Lander robotic arm scooped away the martian soil. NASA said images received on Thursday confirmed that its Phoenix Mars lander has sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft’s robotic microscope station. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    WASHINGTON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- NASA said images received on Thursday confirmed that its Phoenix Mars lander has sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft's robotic microscope station.

    "It looks like a light dusting and that's just what we wanted," said Michael Hecht of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is the lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on Phoenix.