"Not only did we find water ice, as expected, but the
soil chemistry and minerals we observed lead us to believe this
site had a wetter and warmer climate in the recent past -- the last
few million years -- and could again in the future."
Source: Phoenix Principal Investigator
Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, commenting on
interpretations of data that Phoenix returned during its five
months of operation on a Martian arctic plain fill four papers in
this week's edition of the journal Science, the first major
peer-reviewed reports on the mission's findings.