New Mars Forums

Okay, anyone care to guess what *this* is about..?

<< NASA ANNOUNCES MAJOR MARS ROVER FINDING

     NASA will announce a major scientific finding at a Space
Science Update (SSU) Tuesday at 2 p.m. EST, in the headquarters
Webb Auditorium, 300 E St. SW, Washington. The Mars Exploration
Rover (MER) Opportunity is exploring the martian Meridiani
Planum and recently discovered evidence rocks at the landing
site have been altered by water.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will make opening remarks. SSU
panelists:

--Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator, Office of
Space Science
--Prof. Steve Squyres, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and
MER Principal Investigator
--Prof. John Grotzinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Mass, and a MER Co-investigator
--Dr. Dave Rubin, U.S. Geological Survey Sedimentologist at the
Pacific Science Center in Santa Cruz, Calif.
--Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA Lead Scientist for Mars and the Moon,
Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters >>

Look at the list of panellists...  a sedimentologist?

Thoughts anyone..? 

Don't mean to worry anyone, but I think the Borg may already be on Mars...

[http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/galler … 53R1M1.JPG]http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery....1M1.JPG

Everyone...

Feast your eyes on this... 

(Josh - fancy a hike around that crater rim gathering samples..?  )

[http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?act= … ost&id=486]http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?act= … ost&id=486

Shaun,

My canoe is paddling alongside yours all the way my friend, whatever rapids come up ahead of us. 

I have been absolutely convinced that there's life on Mars for as long as I can remember, certainly long before all this luvverly evidence for a warm and wet ancient Mars started coming in. I've given my views and stood up for me beliefs in print in magazines and newspapers, on radio shows, even on TV a couple of times. I have been doubted, questioned, interrogated, laughed at politely, ridiculed openly, called ten different kinds of fanatic/weirdo/optimist/whatever and still, STILL I believe, and every mission and every picture from every probe just convinces me even more deeply that this feeling I have in my gut is right, that there's life there. Maybe in the soil, maybe deep underground. Maybe sheltering in cold, submartian aquifers, maybe clinging to existence on the edges of hot springs hidden in the depths of the Mariner Valley. I don't know. All I know is that something tells me that Mars isn't dead, and that sooner or later one of these robotic ambassadors of ours is going to find the proof everyone *else* needs  That's why the loss of Beagle was so crushing for me personally. I was sure it was going to send back that proof.

It's hard to explain, it really is. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just kidding myself, being too optimistic, seeing shapes in the clouds as it were. But other times I just have a feeling that I can't shake off, you know? That feeling was especially strong last August when Mars was so big and bright in my telescope, and in the telescopes of the members of my astronomical society. After an evening of illustrated lectures, we held a public Mars Gazing Party up at a local school, and over 200 people came along to be shown Mars through our telescopes. And every time I sneaked a peek, and saw the little orange disc shimmering in the eyepiece, with the dark shark fin notch of Syrtis Major at its centre, I just knew that I was looking at a world that has, and hides, life.

Like I said, hard to explain, I'm going to stop trying. Just wanted you to know that there's at least one more canoeist out here paddling frantically against the currents of skepticism...  :;):

I hope that wasn't a dig at Beagle 2... this is no time for gloating...  :;):

Woo-hoo!!  The rocks in the Outcrop were once "drenched in water", and show signs of having been "altered by the presence of liquid water"... the Blueberries are "concretions"... This just gets better and better...!  :laugh:

Yeah, that's the report that really got me thinking and started to slot pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place. If there is a press conference scheduled for next week it's a pretty safe bet that news will leak out before then, so we might just have a couple of days to wait... 

Don't want to sound all ALIAS here, but is anyone else out there getting the twitchy-itchy feeling that the JPL guys are being so quiet because they're building up to a Big Announcement of some kind?

I don 't know, maybe it's me, but it just feels very trickle-down, drip-feedy science at the moment. The "news" and comments all seems to be about page 3 or 4 little things like the sizes of pebbles, how cool it is the rovers have spotted discarded pieces of themselves, how gorgeous the martian sunset is... Day after day we see page after page of pictures of that BL**DY sundial   :rant: and the tiny sun, and no-one seems to be commenting on the fascinating and intriguing details seen in the pictures of the trenches dug by the rovers' wheels... And suddenly, even tho we're now drooling over pics of features out in the World Beyond The Crater there seems to be no rush to get Opportunity out of its crater, even when you can almost hear the rover itself screaming LET ME OUT!!!!!

I've been surfing and scanning many websites (tip: cyanova.com's space pages ( [http://www.cyanova.com/news/space.html]http://www.cyanova.com/news/space.html ) are an excellent resource for one-stop headline browsing) and many commentators seem to think the same thing - that JPL and NASA are slowly building-up to some sort of announcement about the existence of water on Mars now, today, and the implications that has for the existence of life. Gil Levin - one of the team who worked on the Viking missions and still, today, insists the Vs' instruments detected life there - is very excited about the pictures of the trenches and of the so-called "Magic Carpet" material, which he, like me in fact, thinks is mud, surface material rich in perhaps a briny water-ice that flowed briefly when compacted by the airbags. he also thinks that the material exposed in the wheel-dug trenches could even be ice. That might be pushing it a bit far, even for a bio-optimist like myself, but the debate is going on out there, and I'm just wondering if the usually-effusive JPL teams are now being so hush-hush because just around the corner is a Big Thing...

I mean, listen Scully... both rovers are heading for craters, now or at least soon, and peering into the craters will allow us to look beneath the surface, where we've always been convinced water lurks, in whatever form. I don't know, I'm just sensing in my gut that the rovers' missions are shifting - or may even already have shifted, behind closed JPL doors - from the search for evidence of past water to a search for existing water...

Are Spirit and Opportunity about to become water-diviners, or ice prospectors? Could the rovers have a chance of finding something even more exotic than hematite, or even ice?

Thoughts anyone?

Right again Rxke 

[http://www.marsunearthed.com/Opportunit … Region.htm]http://www.marsunearthed.com/Opportu....ion.htm

Yeah, just what I was thinking about the crater...just think if that edge is *all* bedrock? Would that mean Opp landed in a truly ancient area? Will East Crater be full of beads and berries? How many gateau-like layers will Opp stare down upon in East Crater's walls when it climbs the slopes and looks over the side..? Can't wait!!!

As for the terrain Spirit is driving into, yes, for days now I've been struck by how "difficult" it looks, especially when you browse the 3D pics of the area. Some big rocks, and so many smaller rocks so close together, the drivers are going to have their work cut out for them, that's for sure.

Wow, what were the odds of Spirit landing in such a flat area, and of Opportunity pulling-off a cosmic "Hole In One" with its own crater landing?   

Yeah, you're right, I've always thought that too, I have no idea why I said that! 

Okay, we agree on the pre-Sample Return Mission cut-off point for lander / rover preservation. That's progress 

The problem is, there'll be no "later on". As soon as serious manned space exploration / exploitation begins, there will be a roaring trade in salvaging (i.e. stealing) spaceflight memorabilia from Mars, and before Mars the Moon, so unless the landers etc are gathered up and put in one place when there's no further need for them they will be vandalised and carcass-stripped long before they can be integrated into a useful planetary comms system.

Without treaties / agreements / law in place to prevent it, people will go scurrying around Chryse, Utopia, Ares, Gusev and Meridiani collecting every bit of hardware they can find for sale on the black market. Investors / collectors back on Earth with enough money and determination will find ways to ship Viking's robot arm, Sojourner's wheels and Spirit's camera mast back, for display in their own private collections, you can bet on that. How would you feel if you found out that the Columbia crew dedication plaque lovingly fixed to Spirit had been *stolen* and smuggled back home to Earth? Would that be worth the extra expense of building dedicated comms hardware?

Science fiction pessimism? Nope. This happens now, here on Earth. Artefacts from ancient countries, from the pyramids, temples and archaeological sites around the world are Tomb Raided and horded by individuals. More legitimately, we explore the Titanic and bring items back to the surface "for posterity" rather than leave them in place.

So while I agree that it may not be practical to save *everything*, we should certainly make the effort for hardware sent there, say, before the first sample return, that would be a logical cutoff point. What do you think?

I'm sorry, but I just can't agree that we should leave the Vikings, Sojourner and Spirit etc in place just to use them as glorified makeshift cellphone masts in years to come. There's a big - and justified - campaign now to save the Saturn V tower. No-one's keen on covering it in mobile phone dishes, or even melting it down to use in the new Crew Exploration Vehicle...