Big day for humankind – Space.com is reporting that we’ve found water ice on Mars:

Despite recent glitches with NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander on the arctic plains of the red planet, the mission became a resounding success when it found signs of water ice on Thursday.

Four days ago Phoenix photographed dice-sized crumbs of bright material in a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks." When the probe recently went back to look at the trench, they had vanished. The disappearing act convinced scientists the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

As one commenter mentions, no word yet on why they think that it’s water ice and not something else – like CO₂ – but either way you could potentially use the ice as a resource in a future mission to the Red Planet.