Water on Mars!

It has been confirmed, there is ice on Mars. When the Phoenix first landed, any old Joe could look at the photos and say "That sure does look a lot like ice." But then no water showed up in the soil when it was baked in the oven. It seems that it took so long to get the soil in there that any ice had sublimated. Now, bright chunks of material that were excavated by the robotic arm four days ago have disappeared! The only explanation that I or anyone else can think of is that they were chunks of ice that sublimated.

Also on the topic of water, we launched the Jason II satellite this morning aboard a Delta II. Jason monitors ocean surface levels around the globe to the nearest inch. This is an amazing instrument for updating ocean current models and tidal data in addition to answering the obvious question.