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Several days after finding white-looking chunks under the service of Mars, scientists at NASA confirmed it had been frozen water. The chunks disappeared quickly, as water on Mars will boil at 4 degrees Celsius, while also vaporizing in the light atmosphere.

It is assumed from satellite information that about a quarter of Mars may have frozen water just under the service, leading to the possibility of settlement some day. Most of the ice is located in the polar regions of the planet.

"When I look over this flat plain of rock and dirt, it's amazing what we're looking at," said principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson, which is co- managing the project. "If you got a giant broom and swept if off, it's a big ice sheet."

The suggestion that it could be salt or dry ice has been ruled out by the team at the University of Arizona in Tucson because salt doesn't vaporize and other possibilities like frozen carbon dioxide and dry ice wouldn't exist at the the warmer temperatures found at the Phoenix landing site.

While that's true, warmer temperatures I'm talking about where the Phoenix is on Mars gets as cold a minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and warms up to minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. Sounds like where I used to live in northern Minnesota; at least the minus 25 degrees does.

Now the next step will be to dig up some dirt and ice to put in the ovens of the Phoenix to bake. Scientists are hoping to find long-chain carbon molecules of the type which are the building blocks of life. If they do, it would be a major step toward eventually putting people there to inhabit it.