NEWEST ROVER TO LAND ON MARS 8/6/2012

@farmerman,

That thing's the size of a minivan, right? Any competent soccer mom could have packed way more **** in there, plus a half a dozen kids.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

I just cauight this observation . got my morning laugh out of the way, now I can be the famous prick that everyone has come to love.
Imagine NASA having established a "packing density committee" made up of soccer moms.

0 Replies

When is NASA going to stop focusing on whether life could have arisen on Mars and start trying to find it?

There has been strong evidence for life-brooding conditions on ancient mars for several years now at least, and each new discovery by one of their rovers just keeps compounding the evidence. I understand that they're being thorough, but come on guys, it's time to move to the next stage and actually start looking for what we really want to find... life (or relics of it). We're not getting any younger here. Smile

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Our wheels grind exceedingly fine but also exceedingly slowly.
They are aslo taking the rock prints of the planet from all the spectrophotography work.

Theres so many experiments goin on on those little Rovers that they are like Swiss army knives

1 Reply

Opportunity rover discovers traces left by ' water you can drink ' on Mars
The Space Reporter - ‎39 minutes ago‎
Though Spirit stopped operations in 2010, both the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers have located evidence of wet environments on ancient Mars.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

For me at least, the evidence for life-viable conditions on ancient Mars is good enough. I'm convinced that conditions were reasonable for life to possibly have developed. So I get a little tired when I keep reading headlines which reiterate what we really already know. So I'm ready for them to move on to a different exploratory focus and start actually looking for life (or remnants of it).

I completely understand that they are going slow and being thorough, and I understand that that's the way science is done. But I think when you've already proven your original line of inquiry beyond reasonable doubt, that it's more productive to move on to the next (more important) line of investigation. And I think they're at that point now. Time to move on to a different focus of exploration.

2 Replies

@rosborne979,

I think an important question would be whether or not Mars ever had a magnetic field to deflect cosmic radiation, and if so, when was it lost. Cosmic radiation could play hell with the long protein chains we are talking about (even if not every thinks about it) when we say "life."

0 Replies

An interesting article from Nature on radiation data recorded by the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory--i.e., Curiosity) during the voyage to Mars.[/i] The article cites the journal Science.

0 Replies

An interesting blog page from The Planetary Society on the bizarre magnetic field of Mars.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Although weve known about the opposable magnetic flux on Mars, its always been a hit or miss as to exactly where the dipole pops out. Now , with this mapping we have some good data.

From the outcome,That would mean that Mars will be one hell of a reservoir for metals . Id be training those Rovers to look for quartz venation in the rocks they ride over.

I could see Mars as the Pittsburgh of the future. MAke products and ship em around the galaxy

1 Reply

@farmerman,

But won't the shipping and mining costs be prohibitive...as compared to mining them on earth?

2 Replies

@Ragman,

Im not 100% serious .

0 Replies

I picture distant future Mars as having a lone outpost, with a handfull of people to do science and investigate. Any more advanced use of the planet seems unlikely to me.

0 Replies

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/68065000/jpg/_68065093_ridge.jpg

"If you look at all of the water-related discoveries that have been made by Opportunity, the vast majority of them point to water that was a very low pH - it was acid.

"We run around talking about water on Mars. In fact, what Opportunity has mostly discovered, or found evidence for, was sulphuric acid.

"Clay minerals only tend to form at a more neutral pH. This is water you could drink. This is water that was much more favourable for things like pre-biotic chemistry - the kind of chemistry that could lead to the origin of life."

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

I wouldnt wory. Life can take hold or appear in all kinds of environments including really low pH's

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

many times they would be exhausting the lines of evidence so that they could sidle into a conclusion where to see life or are they even in a correct spot? As Edgar reported, the oxide and sulphate coatings on rocks, rather than evidences of clay minerals, would lead to a whole different batch of conclusions.
And if you look at the rocks, they only have evidence of episodic weathering in flowing water. SOme ofthe rocks are subangular with only the edges rounded slightly. Thats episodic flooding and seasonal water perhaps. Its like how the grand canyon rocks appear. Water undermines large banks and rock tumble in tye stream and the streamnsflow and then dry up so the rocks are often quite angular.
We are always used to making comparison models and then testing them out.
Lastly, they dont wanna **** up any future science with quick conclusions that fall apart later

0 Replies

@Ragman,

Your beard hid the smirk.

0 Replies

I edited my story too short. The latest water discovery points to drinkable water.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

Here's another interesting report from NASA.

Quote:

Ailing NASA Telescope Spots 503 New Alien Planet Candidates
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 9 hrs ago

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted 503 new potential alien worlds, some of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it.
"Some of these new planet candidates are small and some reside in the habitable zone of their stars, but much work remains to be done to verify these results," Kepler mission manager Roger Hunter, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., wrote in an update last Friday (June 7).
The latest haul brings Kepler's tally of exoplanet candidates to 3,216. Just 132 of them have been confirmed by follow-up observations to date, but mission scientists expect at least 90 percent will end up being the real deal. [7 Greatest Kepler Discoveries (So Far)]
The new finds were pulled from observations Kepler made during its first three years of operation, from May 2009 to March 2012, researchers said. The telescope hasn't done any planet hunting since being hobbled by a failure in its orientation-maintaining system last month.

0 Replies

Now that's what I'm talkin about Smile

Quote:

With Russian help, Europe prepares to search for life on Mars

...Instead of sampling the planet's radiation-blasted surface as the Viking probes did, the ExoMars rover will use a radar sounder to search for subterranean water and then drill down about 6 feet for samples that will be processed through onboard laboratories.

"If there is any life and if we discover it, it will be unambiguous," said Vincenzo Giorgo, Thales Alenia's vice president of exploration and space. "On Viking everybody thought, ‘We found it, we found it,' but then nobody could prove it."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-air-show-space-mars-idUSBRE95I1EP20130619

1 Reply

NEWEST ROVER TO LAND ON MARS 8/6/2012

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know