Rovers on Mars

I don't have access to their war room, but they must figure they can overcome the obstacles in that time frame.

http://www.space.com/30062-mars-rover-curiosity-weird-rock.html

Wish we had a clear view of this.

It looks to me (through gunga's eyes) it is the Martian version of Frogger. That's obviously tire tracks and a frog.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/mars-flowing-rivers-briny-water-nasa-satellite-reveals/

This was incredible news.

We've known for years that there's ice on the polar caps and sub-surface ice probably over a large portion of the surface. We've seen evidence of seeps in ancient gullies and now they've found actual liquid water (brine) on the surface.

I've been focused on the Methane plumes. With those along with liquid water and ice in present day events, it's starting to look like Mars would be quite habitable for microbes (if they ever evolved). And I'm betting they did. And once life gets started it's very hard to wipe out completely. So it may still be there. I just hope I live long enough (at the rate NASA is going) to know if it's made of DNA like Earth life, or something different.

This crater, Hale Crater, is in the southern hemisphere, near the Argyre Basin, just southeast of the Valles Marinaris, the channels of which lead Giovanni Schiararelli to suggest that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. As is the case with our planet, the season affect is greater in the southern hemisphere. During southern winter, Mars is at aphelion--it is farthest from the sun, so that the cold is likely to be more extreme. By the same affect, during southern summer (which is now approaching), Mars is at perihelion, it is closest to the sun. That means that daytime temperatures on Mars reach their highest ranges in the southern summer, despite the greater elevation of the southern hemisphere as compared to the northern hemisphere. It has not occurred to me before this, but this is the most likely area for liquid water to be found. I'd still say that any life forms found on Mars will be underground, and this is a very likely region.

when Herschel first claimed that oceans existed on MArs , and that Italian guy called em channels, "Canalli" in Italian, we were exposed to a belief that there was surface water on the planet from the geomorphology of the basins and sluices.We really had no hard proof.
In 2011 another scientist claimed he saw evidence of surface water from an enclosed basin. This could not be duplicated so it died too.

In this event,Theyve got some good solid evidence based on three years of satellite reflectance data by a grad student .

I think we will need to look at the chemistry of the water solution, as well as the geometry of the seepage patterns and the extent of the sink for the runoff and infiltration (Im assuming its runnoff that is ground water bound). Best way is probably seismic survey using a towed ( an rolled out and rolled up) array of dual fqce seismic phones hooked up to something like a caltrop which was first used by Romans to deploy spikes so they would always point up no matter how they landed. A seismic survey will give a fairly accurate 3D map of subsurface density and will ID the ground water table or anything that is even partially saturated (called a vadose zone).

Id love to work on this because its actually mining (for water).
Drilling would be kinda energy intensive and rigs are always breaking down , (besides, they wouldnt get past a few 10,s of feet without human intervention and possible running out of power.

Obviously drilling will have to happen sooner or later but not as a first step. Itd be a wasted effort.


Its gonna take a goodly effort to get a 30 lb hammer lifted up on a drop table to provide the seismic energy.
We had a seismic "jug" affixed to the first Viking lander but it never recorded anything and we then assumed that Mars was essentially seismically dead. That was 1978 technology. Were in a whole nother world of data collection and sensor sensitivity.

This calls for another mission.

I wonder what the boiling point of water is on Mars with that thin atmosphere.

The general lack of interest in the doings of the NASA Bots is proof positive that their manned mission program is never going to happen. Washington will keep claiming that they are going to do a manned mission, but nothing more than token money will ever be appropriated.

supersaturated salt solution at 6 m Bars will boil around 12 C on mars
(give or take 11). Ill go with the 12 until somebody comes up with a better calcfrom a graph

I dont know where rap is, he usually fixes my nomograph mind

When doing your calculations, keep in mind that most of the martian surface is at 10 millibars or more atmospheric pressure, and that would certainly be the case in Gale crater, which may have relatively high pressure--it's a part of the Argyre region, which is the second lowest area of elevation on Mars. At the datum, which is defined as the 6.1 millibar level, water will just barely stay in a molecular state--less atmospheric pressure than that and the hydrogen and oxygen will not stay bonded under even the slightest pressure of any kind on the molecular bond.



This image from Sky and Telescope-dot-com, which gives NASA as the original source, shows the rover's landing spot, and also shows that the elevation of much of the crater, and the landing spot of the rover, is well below the datum.

Schiaparelli used the term canali because that's the Italian word for channels. He was seeing evidence of hyrdrological flow, in his opinion, and for the areas he designated channels, subsequent astronomy and missions to Mars have borne him out. Glaciers, however, can create the same channels. People just wanted to think that Mars was Earth-like, and they've consistently distorted the meaning of what evidence was available. To my knowledge, this is the first unambiguous evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

By the way, Gale Crater is south of the equator--it's in prime real estate for the hottest summers on Mars.

Above, in one of my posts, i wrote "Hale crater"--which ought to have been Gale crater.

If there's brine on the surface, even under relatively rare circumstances, then there may be brine under the surface, and possibly not under such rare circumstances given that the subsurface may be a more stable environment with higher pressure (and possibly higher temps, although I'm not sure that follows).

Also, I think that the idea of sub-surface ice over a large portion of Mars derived from the assumption that the subsurface moisture would be relatively pure water (which must be frozen). But now that we know brine exists and may be ubiquitous, a new conclusion might be that the subsurface moisture isn't ice at all, but a slushy brine. If that's the case, then a portion of the Martian oceans that existed 3 billion years ago may still be there, just absorbed into the surface.

Yes, let's all stay here on this little speck of dust playing with our cell phones forever.

Glaciers carve slightly different shaped "channels" (U shaped with no deeper or shallower stretches)
Streams form v shaped channels with deeper incised portions along cut-banks. The student woulda been able to pick up that difference easily enough.
What he saw were high-energy discharges with v shaped cuts along the longitudinal profile of the channel with a line of meandering deeper points (Thalwegs). His primary information though was slight color an tonal variations. He prolly had a color comparator program built into his scanning programs which would mark differences in values and color saturation in Munsell values (paint industry color codes).

Salt brine usually will separate into a small layer of fresh water (about 1:40 thickness ratio) once the water ceases to be turbulent and gradually goes from laminar to Darcy flow. This layer, due to phoresis and autodissociation of some of the brine, will wind up making a possibly exploitable layer of nearly fresh water at the top (fresh water is much less dense than supersat brines). We can easily remove the wter from the brine but itd be neat to see whether we can count on some naturally desal water.

To heck with just looking for "Life on the planet" (I think we will find some evidence-we will trip over it),, Im thinking more in mission plans without having to carry all our resources on board the bus.

You can not like Hawk's post, but it is hard to deny it. Who is advocating for increasing taxes to pay for space exploration? If the government has billions more it would not borrow as much. If it had billions more after then it might pay down the trillions it already owes. Only after that will real money be available for space exploration. Space exploration may be a popular position with the public, but only if someone else is willing to pay for it.