P - R
type: Concept

PHOENIX
type: Concept
in scheme: projects
definition: Short Title: PHOENIX Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=432 We propose an international, scientifically and technologically interdisciplinary investigation the Antarctic Dry Valleys, to understand the signature of climate variability as written into the soils and to quantify the abundance of life's building blocks there and at the ice-soil boundary. Our field campaign provides a thorough examination of the Dry Valley's physical and chemical nature, using an integrated analysis of multiple data sets. Since the Antarctic dry valleys are among the coldest, driest places on Earth, they are an end-member environment that can be used for comparison to less harsh regions on Earth and more extreme environments on other planets. To that end, we leverage the mission return of the currently funded NASA Phoenix Mars mission, which will land between 65-72?N during the International Polar Year, by providing a direct comparison of the two analogous regions. The proposed project also highly complements Phoenix, as it will enhance the validation of two instruments, thereby strengthening the Phoenix data interpretation and perhaps allowing for an increased understanding of the different evolutionary paths of these two planets. The northern polar region of Mars has many similarities to the several analog regions on the Earth, especially the Antarctic Dry Valleys. The Mars polar region is known to have a substantial amount of water-ice within the top meter of the surface (e.g., Boynton et al., 2002) with a dry overburden of a fraction of a meter thick. In addition, the atmospheric water content on Mars is extremely small only 100 pr microns at it's annual peak. Furthermore, it is thought that the north polar regions undergo climatic changes over an obliquity cycle that could melt this ice reservoir (Jakosky et al., 2003), making this region one of the most likely places on Mars to sustain life should it ever have developed. Because of the inter…