Mars, the Wet, Red Planet

[Jonti]

Martian ice swaps poles every 25,000 years

Looks like the water ice on Mars may in fact be largely at the south pole ... more from the Register yesterday

Water-ice on Mars swaps poles over a cycle that spans 51,000 years or so, in step with the way the planet precesses, or wobbles around on its axis.

 

[editor]

The good news is that against all the odds, both Mars rovers survived the dust storms and are still alive and kicking!

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/...s-Rovers-Still-Kicking-After-Dust-Storm.xhtml

 

[goldenecitrone]

How come it's taken this long to work this out when astronomers have already been discovering planets around other stars light years in the distance? Mars is like popping to the shops in comparison.

 

[editor]

Great pic from the Rover!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6990813.stm

 

[guinnessdrinker]

i'd be excited about finding bacteria on another planet

as long you don't bring back them back with you.

 

[Jonti]

Mars robot unearths microbe clue

The BBC reports ...

"Nasa says its robot rover Spirit has made one of its most significant discoveries on the surface of Mars.

"Scientists believe a patch of ground disturbed by the vehicle shows evidence of a past environment that would have been perfect for microbial life."

more here

 

[Jonti]

And, while we're on the subject ... some readers will remember that in 1976, the Viking Mars landers detected chemical signatures indicative of life ...

July 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat. Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients. The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars.

Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolising them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14.

So why no party?

Because another instrument, designed to identify organic molecules considered essential signs of life, found nothing. Almost all the mission scientists erred on the side of caution and declared Viking's discovery a false positive. But was it?

The arguments continue to rage, but results from NASA's latest rovers show that the surface of Mars was almost certainly wet in the past and therefore hospitable to life. And there is plenty more evidence where that came from, Levin says. "Every mission to Mars has produced evidence supporting my conclusion. None has contradicted it."

Levin stands by his claim, and he is no longer alone. Joe Miller, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has re-analysed the data and he thinks that the emissions show evidence of a circadian cycle. That is highly suggestive of life.

Levin is petitioning ESA and NASA to fly a modified version of his mission to look for "chiral" molecules. These come in left or right-handed versions: they are mirror images of each other. While biological processes tend to produce molecules that favour one chirality over the other, non-living processes create left and right-handed versions in equal numbers. If a future mission to Mars were to find that Martian "metabolism" also prefers one chiral form of a molecule to the other, that would be the best indication yet of life on Mars.

source is #6 of New Scientist's 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense

 

[Jonti]

phoenix sees snow in martian sky!

from BBC science ...

As winter sets in across the northern plain, Phoenix has been seeing frost, ground fog and clouds. Now we add add snow to the list! Snow has been seen falling through the thin martian air, although it looks like the shower did not reach the ground.

The lengthening nights mean that in about a month Phoenix will not be able to generate enough power from its photovoltaics to function. That will be the end, for later in winter the intense cold will wreck the solar arrays.

 

[editor]

Snow?! Wow.

 

[xes]

I nearly posted this yesterday. This saves me doing another space thread
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/29/AR2008092903068.html?hpid=topnews
check the video of the clouds rolling past!!!

here's the NASA release
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/sep/HQ_08246_Phoenix.html

and here's more clouds rolling past for dramatic effect (and cos they're fucking just ever so slightly cool)

I had an actual picture of the snow falling yesterday,but I forgot where I saw it.

 

[xes]

Could this heavy frost be snow?

I think I may well have been mistaken over the snow falling picture,cos it was this pic,and there's no snow falling there (infact it looks like CGI)

 

[soulman]

I think it's far too early to let any humans near Mars.

 

[Ride]

I think it's far too early to let any humans near Mars.

Let's fuck up one planet at a time

 

[soulman]

Let's fuck up one planet at a time

Exactly

 

[T & P]

Weather doesn't look much better than Britain's anyway...

 

[ska invita]

Weather doesn't look much better than Britain's anyway...

...looks a bit like Birmingham too...

 

[Jonti]

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter finds Opals!

reports the BBC ...

A Nasa space probe has discovered a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars.

The find suggests liquid water remained on Mars' surface a billion years later than scientists had previously thought.

It's all to do with the kind of rocks that get laid down under the surface of water. Opaline silicates form where liquid water alters submerged rocky minerals.

The Martian surface certainly looks as if it has been sculpted by water. An understanding of rock formation, coupled with the results from the orbiting space probes, is making this intuition precise and undeniable!

 

[Crispy]

I think I may well have been mistaken over the snow falling picture,cos it was this pic,and there's no snow falling there (infact it looks like CGI)

Course it's CGI ya muppet Who's taking the picture?

 

[cybertect]

The TV producer's assistant, of course.

They didn't actually land on Mars. It's a hangar in Texas.

 

[Jonti]

What's the hangar for?

 

[T & P]

Total Recall was right it seems!

Vast frozen water reserves away from polar caps are discovered


Now we just need a giant reactor to melt all that ice

 

[editor]

"Ground-penetrating radar used by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals numerous huge glaciers up to one half-mile thick buried beneath layers of rock and debris. Researchers said one glacier is three time the size of Los Angeles in area."

Imagine what might be buried in there!

It's an incredible discovery and really gives hope to a manned mission. Eventually, at least.

*holds up hand for place on the Mars mission.

 

[editor]

Here's a fabulous video of photos taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xIbjadQQDWg

 

[editor]

Five years on and still rockin'!

The US space agency's (Nasa) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet.

The first robot, named Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later.

It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone.

The rovers' data has revealed much about the history of water at Mars' equator billions of years ago.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."

Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water.

Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum.

Its data has shown conclusively that Mars sustained liquid water on its surface. The sedimentary rocks at its study location were laid down under gently flowing surface water.

The rovers are now showing some serious signs of wear and tear.

Spirit has to drive backwards everywhere it goes because of a jammed wheel; and Opportunity's robotic arm has a glitch in a shoulder joint because of a broken electrical wire.

There have been times also when the vehicles' have been dangerously short on power because of the dust covering on their solar panels.

When Spirit and Opportunity do eventually fail, Nasa will have to wait awhile for its next surface mission.

It recently delayed this year's planned launch to 2011 of a much more capable vehicle, known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The rover project has been beset by technical and budgetary problems.

The decision was taken not long after Europe also put back its rover venture known as ExoMars. Officials cited cost concerns.

It is likely all surface missions in future for Nasa and the European Space Agency will be joint affairs because of the high cost of getting spacecraft down on to the planet.

Nasa lost contact with its static Phoenix lander in November. It was operating in much more difficult conditions at a high-latitude location.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/7808917.stm

 

[editor]

Fantastic article in the Guardian today:

It's snowing on Mars ...
... or at least in the sky above it. This is just one extraordinary piece of information being sent back to us by the landers, probes and rovers scanning the planet. Home to the largest mountain in the solar system and a canyon as long as the US is wide, it is a world as fantastic as any imagined by JG Ballard

High in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below - not these days, anyway - but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground.

The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet's north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

The news of snow falling is just one piece of an extraordinary wealth of information that has recently been sent back from Mars by orbiters, landers and rovers. Together, they have mapped the surface in unprecedented detail, cracked open rocks, sniffed the atmosphere and dug down into the soil. What they have found points to an unimagined Martian history, one where life may have once gained a foothold and may even cling on still in the frigid soils of the permafrost....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/27/mars-snow-space-technology-nasa

And check out this amazing photo:

 

[xes]

that is one crystal clear picture!! Amazing how earthlike it looks.

I wonder how long a snowman would last on mars.

 

[editor]

Another pic of ice on the planet:

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars, captured by the unit’s HiRISE camera after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet. HiRISE is an acronym for “High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment”, which involves the use of a special on-board camera to survey the surface of the planet. The finds indicate water ice occurs beneath Mars’ surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.

http://www.photographyblog.com/news/hirise_camera_captures_images_of_ice_on_mars/