Fact Sheet
Dirty Secrets
Martian dirt, which is shown in this microscopic image from the Phoenix lander, would be neither especially harmful nor helpful to plant life, the lander's chemical laboratories have shown. The fine-grained material contains many of the nutrients used by Earth plants, but it also contains compounds that are unfriendly to many types of plants. This image spans one millimeter (0.04 inches), and is the most detailed picture of Martian soil ever obtained. The sample was gathered from beneath the lander, which mission managers declared dead on November 10. [NASA/JPL/Univ. Arizona/Imperial College London]
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