10:15 PM, 6/19/08, Update: Ice indirectly confirmed at Phoenix landing site
Scientists examining photographs from the Mars Phoenix lander say the disappearance of clumps of material in a trench dug by the spacecraft's robot arm provides convincing evidence of exposed ice that subsequently vaporized. The robot arm, meanwhile, digging a nearby trench, ran into a hard layer of material that scientists believe may be a subsurface layer of ice at the same depth where the now-vanished chunks were uncovered.
