Rovers on Mars

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

For those who are actually interested in what is going on on Mars, with just one of the rovers, here's a summary from last May of the methane issue: From Astrobiology Magazine: "Mystery methane on Mars, the saga continues."

I love the Methane mystery. This was another one I've been following closely. I listened to the entire press conference back when they announced the Methane spike event(s).

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Quote:

Does Mars need protection from our microbes? Conventional wisdom says yes, as does space law—the United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits the contamination of potentially fertile worlds with earthly bacteria. Yet some researchers disagree: Mars will be just fine on its own, they say, and the stringent safeguards now in place discourage scientists from exploring the Red Planet. On missions dedicated to searching for life, costs “could easily double because of planetary protection procedures,” says Cornell University astrobiologist Alberto G. Fairén.

Protecting Mars is not worth the effort and expense, Fairén and Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University argue in a recent issue of Nature Geoscience. After all, some Earth bacteria are probably already there, having hitched a ride on debris from ancient meteor impacts or more recently on NASA's Viking landers. Besides, any life-form already on Mars would easily fight off the poorly adapted invasive microbes.

The odds of NASA changing course are low. “If you want to study life elsewhere, you have to make sure not to bring Earth materials along” or else risk mistaking stowaways for alien life, says Catharine Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer.

John Rummel, Conley's predecessor at NASA, says simulations and experiments suggest Earth bacteria actually could survive on Mars. Adds Rummel: “We don't know everything that Earth organisms can do.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nasa-too-worried-about-contaminating-mars/

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@hawkeye10,

We're not in complete disagreement you know. Are you even reading my posts or are you just reacting to what you expect them to say?

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@rosborne979,

I was not responding to you. I am not really a science guy though I did as a kid want to be an astronaut like most of my friends in the late 60's, so I follow NASA somewhat. This business of what the american people are willing to pay for and what we will not interests me. Good/bad government interests me. Public/private as well. But this "we might not be able to go exploring Mars like we want because we dont want to pollute it" is new to me, and unbelievably stupid. When I first heard about it I thought surely "NASA planetary protection officer" was from the Onion or some such place.

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@rosborne979,

I think it's an issue with legs, too. It seems that they budget the MSL's time with each procedure, so we'll probably have to wait until they schedule time for methane tests again. Hey, what's a few billion dollars here or there--we should send a dedicated methane mission up there.

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I'm not sure i agree with the conclusion that terrestrial organisms can survive on Mars. There are cryophilic organisms in Antarctica, but they did not arise under those conditions, they evolved as the conditions there changed. I can't imagine that cryophilic organisms contaminate the rovers sent there. The question is would terrestrial organisms brought there on a rover survive to evolve for Martian conditions. Personally, i doubt that would happen because the initial contaminating community would be so small.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I'm not sure i agree with the conclusion that terrestrial organisms can survive on Mars.

I went both ways on this issue while writing one of my previous posts. First I was going to say that I doubted anything from Earth could out compete a native martian microbe. But then I remembered that we have many cases here on Earth of exotic biology out competing native species. Granted the difference between planets should be a much larger gap to deal with, but then again, we don't know that for sure. We don't even know if life exists on Mars yet, much less anything about how it may work. And then I also reminded myself that anything which was able to survive the trip to Mars on that probe, through harsh space and then re-entry would necessarily be an extremely tough little microbe. So anything which did arrive on Mars would inevitably be very tough to kill.

Then there's the possibility that life on Mars may be so different from earth biology that they don't even interact much less compete.

I came to the conclusion that we just don't know enough yet to even make a reasonable guess as to what might happen. And this is one of the most exciting aspects of this type of exploration, because we stand to learn so much from so little. Even the tiniest bits of data could result in fundamental shifts of our understanding of martian geology or even biology in a general sense.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

I came to the conclusion that we just don't know enough yet to even make a reasonable guess as to what might happen. And this is one of the most exciting aspects of this type of exploration, because we stand to learn so much from so little. Even the tiniest bits of data could result in fundamental shifts of our understanding of martian geology or even biology in a general sense.

I agree completely with this statement. The more i think about it, the less i am concerned with contamination. Unless a significantly large community of microbes survived the trip to Mars, it is unlikely that enough, or even any, survived to adapt and reproduce. I could be wrong, but i doubt it.

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@rosborne979,

all we will probably be able to do (in the case that terran microbes could survive a trip to Mars), is to accurately locate where they occur and keep track of them.

Anything we do to decon the entry sites will no doubt be toxic to the indigenous critters (if any)

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Now for something completely different:

From Popular Science, Interview with a sarcastic Mars rover.

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The photo below is from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Are we looking at hydrology features? This is Kasei Valles, a series of canyons, modest by Martian standards, just to the northeast of Olympus Mons. Kasei is the Japanese name for Mars.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA20004_modest.jpg

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@Setanta,

One of the craters has features in it, the other seems to be blank. I'm not sure what that means, if anything.

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@rosborne979,

That would suggest to me that the one on the left was created before the water filled the valley. I would assume the one on the right was created after the water drained away.

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The walls of the crater on the left also seem to be eroded, not as high as the crater on the right. It's hard to tell from this picture, though.

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@Setanta,

they look a lot like what, on earth, we call barchan dunes. In such a configuration of "dunal march" the long axes of the dunes are gennerally at a right andgle to the force ( wind or dust storms). Usually on earth the barchans are banana shaped but maybe the atmospherics have something to do with it.
Thats only a guess from Air photo scan but it could be some hydrologic feature that Im sure as hell not familiar with

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@farmerman,

The only reason i'm saying it may be hydrological features is because of what JPL says about Echus Chasma. If Echus Chasma had once been a lake bed, Kasei Valles is the only route by which it could have drained. I claim no expertise--i rely on what JPL has to say.

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@farmerman,

Im gonnastick with barchans (barchanes, barkanes, horshoe dunes ,parabolic dunes). All of them have slightly shallower angles of repose of the sediments on the left sides of the dunes which is the side facing the winds

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@Setanta,

The only water feature that can generate such huge sub parallel underwater banks are "sole features" that can generate large standing waves in a flowing water area like an embayment with swift tides or a huge deltaic plain. I dont see those kinds of features.
Also, the two craters are filled with snd in the same "shallow side facing the wind an steep side against it,)pattern. Thats a wind feature I think

Im aure JPL has a bunch of techies working on the airphotos, so I can wait.

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@farmerman,

With .38 G, you're going to get some serious standing waves. You need a better knowledge of the "geography" of Mars. (By the way, my earlier statement that Echus Chasma and Kasei Valles are on the northwest side of the Tharsis Plateau is incorrect--they are on the northeast side.)

This was the best map i could find with a quick search:

http://web.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog441541/mercatorMOLA.jpg

Where it says "Lunae Planum," the green elevation area to the west is Echus Chasma. JPL states that it is clay at the lowest levels, suggesting there was once standing water there. The green elevation area makes a sharp right turn just south of Tempe Terra, and that's Kasei Valles. If Echus Chasma once were filled with water, Kasei Valles is the path by which water would have drained into the Oceanus Borealis, a northern ocean hypothesized to have existed during the "warm, wet period."

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@Setanta,

Ripple marks only get preserved when overlain by sediments , when theyre un "cemented" they blow apart .
gravity acceleration affects windblown and water borne features equally (its actually easier in water because of the force associated with the media density and viscosity.

Lets bet a virtual beer and see what the JPL "coneheads" report out. Im usually not a poor loser. WHo knows, maybe you have the innate skills to be a remote sensing specialist

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