New Cave Entrances Seen on Mars

Riding with Robots writes "The Mars Odyssey orbiter has come across what look to be openings to cavernous spaces under the surface of Mars. NASA reports the find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caves elsewhere on the Red Planet. These latest images follow other recent discoveries of intriguing places to explore. From the article: 'The find has led some to wonder if these or other caves on the planet may provide shelter to life or former life on the Red Planet. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future," said Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. These caves, however, likely never hosted life due to the extreme altitude of their location. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height," said Cushing.'"

Old news, from APRIL 2!

[Tmack]

Why is this being reported just now by discovery? Are they competing with /. on who can post the oldest articles and get away with calling it news? Really, this was posted on space.com back in APRIL!!!

See Here [space.com]

Blah

Tm

There is good reason to get to those caves.

[MrCopilot]

http://www.highmars.org/niac/niac01.html [highmars.org]

Project Objectives:

The primary objective of this feasibility demonstration is to show that relatively simple, easily-deployable subsurface habitats are constructible in caves, lavatubes, and other subsurface voids. Further, we intend to demonstrate that they are suitable to sustain small animals, plants, and ultimately humans in an otherwise hostile environment.

Re:Hidin' in a cave

[Dunbal]

you could have contributed something worthwhile to the discussion.

      I did. I contributed a link to a Time article. What are YOU contributing, besides banter?

Re:Old news, from APRIL 2!

[x1n933k]

Actually this is different. If we look at NASA's site:

09.21.07 - Odyssey Finds Possible Cave Skylights on Mars NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano.

Sure, both reports mention a volcano's but there's no way NASA would report the same thing twice, right?

[J]

Re:Mars robots

[Tablizer]

Will they steer for the caves?

Even if they were in range (they're not), there are two other problems. First, being solar powered, they couldn't go into the caves because they would have no power to get out if they got stuck or lost. Second, there would be no usable radio communication inside a cave because the walls block the waves.

Seems what is needed is some kind of expendable micro-bot that launches from a bigger bot.
     

Re:Dust-free caves on Mars?

[smellsofbikes]

Likely for the same reasons that terrestrial caves aren't all filled, even though we have a lot more erosive, mass-wasting, and probably as much aeolian redistribution (which is to say: water, landslides, and duststorms.) Caves usually form from water flowing downhill, dissolving out the underlying rock, and eventually escaping, which means a lot of caves go upwards from where the entrance is. If the cave doesn't have much or any wind blowing through it -- if it's dead-end -- there's no reason for wind to blow into it. The entrance will fill, but the rest of the cave has very little air communication with the outside. The primary air exchange system in caves is daily/seasonal heating/cooling, which leads to expansion/expulsion and contraction/indraw of air. Four meters inside the cave, there could be a hurricane outside and you'd never know it. Lots, perhaps most, caves have the entrances mostly filled with debris, but it's mostly from material sliding down and building up a pile of junk just under the overhanging lip of the top of the cave entrance. I'd expect something similar, but much more slow, to be happening on Mars, since there is very little, if any, water-based erosion and no tectonic activity to raise mountain slopes above the angle of repose.