In this week's Mars news, NASA has officially denied rumors from over the weekend that they'd told the President that there was proof of life on Mars, and counter-rumors that they'd said life is impossible there.

In actuality, Phoenix's latest efforts in its tumultuous quest for space-dirt have resulted in ambiguous findings as to whether or not the Martian soil contains perchlorate ions, which may or may not even mean very much (some microbes use it here on earth, but it may be toxic to others, and in particular it inhibits thyroid function in humans). More, we don't even know which of many possible perchlorate salts it was, if it's really there.

So uh, yeah. More dirt, more questions, few or no answers. Just another day on Mars