The scientists working with the Phoenix Mars mission said yesterday they have reached a conclusion regarding the recent discoveries made on the Red Planet:

There is ice on Mars.

The latest findings pushed them closer to answering the question that has been the background of almost 30 years of exploration of the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System: Could there have been life on Mars?

The presence of ice on the Red Planet changed from simple speculation to fact in the minds of the scientist with the Phoenix Mars mission yesterday when a set of pictures were sent 170 million miles to Earth from the Phoenix Lander atop Mars's northern polar plain.

However, the few dice-size solids photographed last Sunday at the bottom of a trench that had been dug by Phoenix's robotic arm disappeared until Thursday. Scientists explained the occurrence saying that the objects were pieces of ice which evaporated through a process called sublimation.

Nevertheless, the paramount thing about the discovery is that the presence of ice means that on Mars there once was water, a vital element of life as we humans know it so far.

The photos taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager were enough to convince the Phoenix researchers who said they don’t need anymore proof. However, it will probably take more than that to convince the entire astrophysical community that the disappearing of the solids lead to the conclusion that there was water on Mars.

The solids may look like ice, but could very well be salt, some scientists said. However, ice is the more likely explanation. Mark Lemmon, a scientist in charge of Phoenix's stereo surface imager, sustains the theory according to which the photos prove the presence of ice on Mars.

"Salt does not behave like that. We found what we were looking for. This tells us we have water ice within reach of the arm," said Lemmon according to The Washington Post.

"It must be ice. These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The robotic arm of the Phoenix Mars Lander which dug several trenches on the Red Planet appeared to hit a hard surface on Thursday. The occurrence made scientists believe that was another layer of ice.

The trenches were labeled "Snow White 1" and "Snow White 2" and the place where scientists believe the ice evaporated was informally referred to as "Dodo Goldilocks."

Despite the fact that Mars (named after the Roman god of war) is too cold now to have water on its surface, this may not have always been the case. The images from the Viking missions carried out in the 1970s show what scientists identified channels and gullies carved by flowing liquid at some point in the planet's history.

The Red Planet’s northern polar plain had been chosen for the landing site of the Phoenix Mars Lander by scientists because they thought the best chances to find ice were there. They were right on that.

"If you were to get a big broom and sweep it off, we are on a big ice sheet," Smith said.