Cancel your trip to Aspen. NASA revealed Monday that it’s Phoenix Mars Lander has discovered snowfall on the red planet.

According to the NASA Web site, the Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds and spacecraft soil experiments show evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water on Mars, two processes that occur on Earth.

The clouds releasing snow are roughly two-and-a-half miles above the planet, and the snow is vaporizing before it reaches the surface, according to the Web site.

The Phoenix Mars Lander is a research program designed to understand the history of water and habitability potential of Mars.

The Phoenix program is being lead by UA Senior Research Scientist Peter H. Smith in collaboration with NASA, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Launched in August 2007, the Phoenix Mars Lander has been on Mars for 125 days and is already being called a success by NASA officials.
The Mars Lander discovered ice on the surface of Mars in June and has since been looking for signs of liquid water.

Ronald Greeley, a regents professor in ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration, said the significance of the presence of snow on Mars is that it indicates a direct source of water to the surface of the planet.

A direct source of water is an important factor in one of the Lander’s earlier discoveries: carbonate minerals that require water to form, and prior to the Mars Lander’s discovery, were only found on earth.

“Carbonate minerals require liquid water to be on the surface of the planet,” Greeley said. “This can’t happen now because the temperature on Mars is too cold, and liquid freezes.”

Greeley said that carbonate minerals indicate that at one point in time, Mars wasn’t too cold for liquid water, and that over time, there has been a dramatic change in climate.

NASA extended the three-month mission through the end of the year if the lander can survive that long. With summer waning, less sunlight is reaching the spacecraft’s solar panels.

Phoenix will be out of touch with ground controllers briefly in November when the sun is between Earth and Mars, blocking communications.

Scientists are racing to use the remaining four of Phoenix’s eight tiny test ovens before the lander dies. The ovens are designed to sniff for traces of organic, or carbon-based compounds, that are considered the building blocks of life.

Experiments so far has failed to turn up definitive evidence of organics.

Reach the reporter at jaking5@asu.edu.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.