On Friday, NASA scientists announced their coming across a piece of information of paramount importance in their current research field: they now know for a fact that there is ice on Mars.

This can be very well considered a major step forward in finding an answer to that troubling question of whether or not life could have existed on the Red Planet.

Although the planet’s climate is way too cold to allow the existence of water in its liquid form, there are people saying that things may have been different before. There is a definite chance for the icy region found in the northern area, where the Phoenix Lander is deployed, to be in fact the altered state of a former ocean.

The search for life forms however, is an entirely different thing. The Phoenix is not equipped to perform such a search; therefore, until another mission is put together, with the appropriate technology, scientists will have to improve their reading of the planet’s climate and soil.

When preparing the Phoenix mission, the choosing of the landing site wasn’t left to chance; seven years ago, the instruments found aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft hinted at the presence of ice in the Martian northern region.

Some fairly interesting information has been gathered so far: in mid-February, scientists announced that the Red Planet was too salty to sustain life. The early planet’s high concentration of minerals in water appears to have made it inhospitable to even the most powerful microbes.

However, as the mission advances and new information is compiled, there are high chances for surprising (and very enthusiastically anticipated) conclusions to be drawn.