Despite the fact that before the space age the presence of water was already known, and that in January 2004 the European Mars Express probe detected spectral lines of steam, it was the Phoenix explorer that managed to carry out laboratory tests that confirmed its existence.
In fact, on June 19 of that year, NASA claimed that the probe had found ice while excavating the North Pole, and that unearthed chunks of ice were sublimated on June 15. Days later, the robotic arm of the device deposited a sample that the instrumentation identified as water vapor, which was extracted from a hole of about five centimeters in Martian soil and exposed for two days to its environment until it began to evaporate, which facilitated your investigation.
2008 was a year in which numerous studies were started in this field, since as a result of this finding, for example, measurements were taken of the north polar ice cap of the red planet and it was determined that its total volume of ice was water in the cap is 821 thousand square kilometers, that is, 30 percent of the layer that Greenland has on Earth.
On July 31, the TEGA mass spectrometer, one of the Phoenix instruments, pointed out that a soil sample had trouble entering the kiln, and according to its results, it was water ice, which confirmed once again Your presence.
On September 30 of that year, the device detected snow in the Martian atmosphere, which resulted in an unprecedented find. The location was 4 thousand meters high on the same probe, and according to the observations, the flakes sublimated before reaching the surface.
Also, subsequent investigations revealed that there were periods in the past of the soil where water ran in a liquid manner. In this way, the Phoenix had more than achieved its goal.
Finally, it was decided to terminate the mission, and on May 25, 2010, Phoenix was officially declared dead.
On July 30, 2008 on the planet Mars, the NASA probe Phoenix finds water.
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