Mars Rover Opportunity Finds Life-Friendly Niche 55
astroengine writes "Gale Crater, the region being explored by NASA's Curiosity rover, isn't the only place on Mars where ancient microbes may have thrived. New evidence from NASA's senior robotic Mars scout, Opportunity, shows life-friendly water once mixed with telltale, clay-bearing rocks that now lie on the broken rim of Endeavour Crater, an ancient 14-mile wide basin on the other side of the planet from Gale. 'If I were to go Mars early in time and wanted to do a well, I'd do it there,' planetary scientist Ray Arvidson, with Washington University in St. Louis, told Discovery News. 'It's like drinking water. This would have been a niche for whatever life at the time existed.'"
So, when are we going to send tunnel-bots? (Score:3)
We get it already -- there was water there, and apparently there still is water under the surface. If Mars One actually goes through, I hope they take lots of shovels, and do lots of digging.
Re:So, when are we going to send tunnel-bots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mars is quite small, so excavating at maybe under 40 sites on the entire planet should be statistically a good search.
Re:So, when are we going to send tunnel-bots? (Score:5, Informative)
Right. the LAND area of Mars and Earth are close.
Land area of Earth 148 million km.
Surface area of Mars 144.8 million km
So our sample to date is pretty miserable.
However, our samples to date agree with out space based observations. Both on earth and on mars. We don't have to turn over every rock.
We need rovers that can get to some more risky locations. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03... [nasa.gov]
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There are lots of these to investigate: http://www.msss.com/mars_image... [msss.com]
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We need rovers that can get to some more risky locations
Indeed. Why don't they land a rover at the bottom of the very deepest canyon ? Higher air pressure, more humidity... They should start mass producing those rovers. Making 10 of them is probably hardly more expensive than just making one anyway.
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Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach, far more difficult terrain to rover, far narrower communications windows.... The targeting teams have a very difficult job indeed, they have to reach places that are both scientifically interesting, *and* that the vehicles have a reasonable chance of surviving a landing at, *and* offers terrain the rovers can operate over, *and* which doesn't impose excess
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Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach, far more difficult terrain to rover, far narrower communications windows...
Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach? I doubt that.
Some of these canyons are very wide, with large flat bottoms, but you don't even have to go for the worst canyons
just the most interesting ones. http://www.msss.com/mars_image... [msss.com]
The radar directed skycrane mechanism used for Curiosity, with a little more fuel could probably drop in much tighter quarters that they've been willing to try so far.
We've got enough orbiters that the communications windows are also less of a problem.
I think the rovers need
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Of course you doubt it, you're clueless idiot.
Moron. The problem isn't the number of birds, it's having the view of the sky cut off by canyon walls.
No shit sherlock. What other genius insights do y
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Making 10 of them is probably hardly more expensive than just making one anyway.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/mi... [nasa.gov]
$1.8 billion for development and investigations. This would probably not increase significantly.
$0.7 billion for launch and operations. This will.
So, one rover is $2.5 billion; ten rovers at once are a minimum of $8.8 billion.
Basically even if they're using a bunch of identical rovers, each additional rover is probably gonna add nearly a billion in costs. Getting stuff all the way to Mars is *expensive*!
Should we ever get some kind of space elevator or something that should
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On the other hand, lets say we send another Curiosity, with minimal changes.
Building 10 of these in parallel.
That 1.8 billion drops dramatically, because its already developed. We build in better wheels (they are taking a beating), but leave the rest pretty much the same, resisting the urge to redesign everything from scratch all over again.
Now that 1.8B drops to just the cost in time and personnel to build, test, and package, I'm guessing maybe .2B ea, but lets go with .5B. .7B to launch and operate f
Same
Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is idea for studying the subsurface that is affordable enough that we could actually live long enough to see it; we know the position (orbit, velocity, etc) of Mars with great precision. Why not build a cheap, simple impactor and send it to Mars. Aim it a few hundred meters away from a rover and blow a crater in the surface, recording the impact for spectral analysis and throwing debris around the crater for close inspection. A carefully guided projectile should have a CEP of only tens of meters; risk to a rover would be negligible.
So simple you can take the engineering for granted and so fast we could have it done in only slightly more time than the flight.
Re: Idea (Score:1)
What would Piccard say!?
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Make it so?
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Well, two reasons really. First, the words "cheap and simple" and "Mars" do not occur together in any rational world. Not if you intend to have more than a snowballs chance anyway. Second off, our current CEP for Mars landers is measured in kilometers, not hundreds of meters and certainly not in tens of meters. (And fixing that will do nothing but further ensure that it will be neither cheap nor simple.)
Re:Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
"cheap and simple" and "Mars" do not occur together
Mars mission costs are mostly sunk into the lander/package (i.e. rover.) Launchers aren't that expensive. The idea offered here is just a small inertial warhead with a simple guidance package. No tethers, retro-rockets, balloons, lander telemetry, solar collectors, autonomous navigation, etc., etc. All that complexity and cost is gone.
The cost would be low and the mission profile simple; blow out a crater near a rover.
current CEP for Mars landers is measured in kilometers
We have reconnaissance orbiters around Mars now. The CEP could be reduced several orders of magnitude by using the orbiters for precise guidance.
Part of the reason for high CEP with lander missions is the deceleration profile. This is not a lander. It's a high velocity projectile following a ballistic trajectory all the way to impact.
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The guidance package required is neither simple nor cheap. Since you've gotten rid of the lander (which nowadays provides m
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The Phoenix probe found ice just under soil (Score:3)
Phoenix died during the winter when it was thought probably at least a meter of snow-ice accumulated on top of it and crushed it. Or its batteries were drained beyond recovery during the winter.
I know it's irrational (Score:2)
But I feel ripped off the Mars doesn't have surface water now.
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Re:Disappointed (Score:5, Insightful)
"We must have the humility to understand the limits of our intellect"
Um... no. We must have the blind ambition to push beyond some perceived limits of our intellect. Humility for our achievements -- but aggressive in our progress. I for one would like to see my great^x grand children living on another rock circling another fireball one day.
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I for one would like to see my great^x grand children living on another rock circling another fireball one day.
On yet another rock? Screw that, they aren't big enough, they're dirty, and just too darn cold. How about living on that great big fireball instead? Lots more room, and we solve the global warming process as well!
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Living on that great star? Some important steps have already been taken to achieve that goal!
http://waterfordwhispersnews.c... [waterfordw...rsnews.com]
[North Korea lands first man on the sun]
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They just needed to land at night when it's not so hot.
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Obligitory Aliens History Channel Reference [evolveinc.com]
Impressive. (Score:2, Insightful)
You used an awful lot of words to say not very much.
Understanding the limits of our intellect is exactly the reason for pushing our boundaries to explore. Intellect can be extended and the only way to do so is through exercise. The alternative you (seem) to be proposing is the equivalent of sitting around picking at one's belly fluff in the hope of divine inspiration. In case it's not immediately obvious: that isn't what got us where we are today.
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Does it mean, if you don't understand something, and physicists don't understand it, that means it doesn't exist?
No, it doesn't. You're being really bizarre here. What Neil deGrasse Tyson was arguing is that if you don't understand something, and physicists don't understand something, then it says nothing about whether or not God did it. That's really, really obvious.
Note that Neil deGrasse Tyson explicitly does NOT identify as an atheist.
Nobody is seriously suggesting everything outside our understanding = God anymore.
Umm...you just did. Your initial post started with a strawman about atheists, a proclamation that this isn't science's "final triumph over God". Then it goes on about how we don
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breathlessly waiting for the announcement confirming life on another planet because they believe that will be the final triumph of science over God.
...huh?
I think you overestimate how important god is to atheists.
God is extra-terrestrial life by definition
I'm not familiar with any definition of life that includes an omnipotent omnipresent timeless entity.
There is life on other planets/in other dimensions, and that life is possibly many many orders of magnitude more intelligent than us.
Umm, maybe. You seem to be talking about extraterrestrial life beyond just your notion of god here. How do you know?
Meanwhile, our narcissistic belief that our discovery of the metaphorical light switch [...]
I have no idea what the metaphorical light switch is.
entitles us to stand before the universe and claim "knowledge"
This is poetic, and I understand you're warning against hubris, but this it doesn't actually have meaning. What is overweaning pride here? How much pride in advancement is t
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breathlessly waiting for the announcement confirming life on another planet because they believe that will be the final triumph of science over God.
nah. the gods won't care and the scientists are probably going to tire quickly of any conversation of science vs gods.
What will be interesting is the impact of that kind of discovery on day to day religious life. Things like "God shaped man in his image and likeness" (Gen. 2.7) will look out of place if weird looking aliens are found. More so if the aliens hold a similar belief about alien-shaped gods.
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Milk run (Score:1)
They're all making it sound Mars One will be a milk run.
Donuts, water, milk.
Garçon -- check please!
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Re:Not a bad run, so far.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Each time a fail of any magnitude occurs, it is incessantly toasted by ambitiously administering the brogans to the deceased equine.
Yet two rovers designed to last 90 days on another freaking planet operate 24x and 40x+ design specifications without overtaking the Bieber arrest in internet interest.
We need a new PR guy.
Re:Not a bad run, so far.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not a bad run, so far.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it is so much bad PR from JPL - they do pretty well with their limited PR budget, but more that these explorations rapidly exhaust the short attention spans of most of the public. Sojourner landed in 1997, Spirit & Opportunity in 2004 (with Opportunity still operational today) and Curiosity in 2012. Kids have grown up for over 10 years with pictures from rovers on Mars. There are teenagers and young adults today who can't remember a time when we didn't have a rover on Mars. It's old news.
And the missions themselves - launch day (big fiery fast moving things!) is pretty cool, but then you have a long, quiet coast phase. Then maybe you have a complicated and dramatic re-entry / touchdown that gets attention up (Pathfinder, the MER rovers, and the Curiosity skycrane ftw). But after that, it's a long slow roll across something that looks like the Arizona desert. The science is immensely interesting, but there isn't much gee whiz factor for the average person. And some of those average people are the ones that decide what gets aired on the news, so if they don't care to see it, few others will.
I actually don't think that many people give a damn about Bieber's shenanigans, but somebody in the media thinks that is the noise that will attract the eyeballs to their ads.
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Doesn't even have to be "gee whiz", just humanising it makes an enormous difference. Look at what Chris Hadfield did for manned space exploration; he's been in and out of the news for about a year now despite retiring. When someone involved in a project is popular, get them in front of the camera again. JPL should've given that amazing hair guy a big grant after Curiosity landed, when he was super popular, so he could go and make some Youtube videos.
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I will start having faith in the human race when we start recognising the efforts of scientists, engineers, health professionals, volunteers and educators at the same level as sportspersons, politicians, pop-singers and actors. Seriously, what do most celebrities contribute to the betterment of the species?
Sorry, I'm in a cynical mode at the moment.
14-mile wide? (Score:3)
14-mile wide basin on the other side of the plane
Sorry but Martians used the metric system.
Meanwhile... (Score:1)