Orbiter Reveals Rock Fracture Plumbing On Mars 61
Riding with Robots writes "Mars researchers report that a robotic spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that once directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone. 'This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet,' said one of the mission scientists for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been regularly returning terabytes of high-resolution images and other kinds of data from Mars."
Data rate of 6Mb/s (Score:3, Informative)
I was going to challenge this but it appears MRO transmits data about ten times faster [wikipedia.org] than other probes. Nevertheless, at 6 Megabits/second it would take 370 hours (over two weeks) to send one Terabyte.