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Space Science

The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures 392

Posted by timothy from the on-the-qt-and-very-hush-hush dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Spirit rover's first soil analysis reveals some puzzling features about Gusev crater. The region seems to contain the greenish silicate mineral, olivine, which usually is considered water-reactive and thus volcanic in origin. For olivine to be found in the soil may point to rock formation during a drier period in martian history, even with strong evidence for sampling in an ancient lakebed. A second puzzle is why the soil seems so crusty. After the rover arm pressed soil down, the top layer of dust hardly moved, a finding that suggests something may be binding the dust like some type of salt or thin cement." For even more and better Mars pictures, read on below.

mlyle writes "I've spent a few hours hacking together some software to deal with the Mars Exploration Rover imagery at JPL. The software puts together a webpage and RDF feed of new raw imagery as it is posted to the JPL site, along with technical information decoded about how the picture was taken. It also produces stereo anaglyphs and color images that NASA has not seen fit to convert and make publically available. Be sure to also check out the ultra high resolution image of the lander as viewed from Spirit."
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The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures More

The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures

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  • Maestro update! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:49AM (#8042370)
    There's also been an update for the Maestro visualisation and planning thingy [telascience.org]. I'm downloading it right now - let's get some more BitTorrent seeds up and running! :)

    • Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by diersing ( 679767 )
      I have a mars question...

      It seems the best the NASA guys are hoping for is evidence that there was once water on the planet. According to the news this would prove that life was once possible there. My questions is... what does that do for us?

      Evidence that dinasaurs once roamed the earth isn't taking us towards bringing them back. From a casual observer this seems a pointless exercise, but I'm sure I'm just not informed enough, can someone help me out?

      • Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Informative)

        by maeka ( 518272 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:06AM (#8042492) Journal
        Finding out where/when/how life was once possible on Mars would help us find evidence of those life forms. Finding evidence (assuming it exists) of wholly unique, truly alien, life would help us greatly here on Earth understand just what life it, how it began, and go a long way towards answering the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe? Is Earth the sole planet with life?
        • Oh, of course there is life out there. The universe is simply to huge for that not to be the case. The question is, are these aliens sentient, have they evolved a sophisticated culture and if the above are true, what will they think of us when their SETI program picks up the first episodes of Twin Peaks [twinpeaks.org].

      • Re:Maestro update! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by VertigoAce ( 257771 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:07AM (#8042499)
        First of all, unless you have overwhelming evidence of life on mars, you need to have evidence that life was possible. If you know that it was possible, then you might devise ways of checking if life did exist. This is assuming of course that water is essential.

        Why search for ancient life in the first place? There's a chance that it would help explain the origin of life on earth. Future missions would be devoted to figuring out how life came to be. If both planets had life completely independently (no rocks with bacteria flying through space) it would tell us that it's very likely there is life elsewhere in the universe.
        • You might explain the how, but you'll never know the why. Why does anything exist in the first place. There must be a reason. Why isn't there just "nothing" (ie: absense of anything... including space.) Really, why is there a universe at all? God seems about the only answer that doesn't cause your head to go into meltdown. Even if you think about the big bang... Where the hell did all this energy come from?

          • Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Omestes ( 471991 )
            Why must people bring God into EVERYTHING. The big bang is sort of dubious in my eyes too, but more plausable than god. There are SEVERAL decent arguements theorizing the big bang, and only one decent argument prooving God, that being the dubious ontological one postulated by Anselm.

            Answers do not have to prevent your head from "going into meltdown", the universe is a big place, time is huge, and even the smallest building blocks of matter are more complex than a person can wrap their heads around. Why

      • Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Yorrike ( 322502 )
        The ability to show, through direct sampling, that a life friendly environment existed on Mars at one point will lead to us being able to make two conclusions.

        Either this solar system is extraordinarily friendly i nterms of having life supporting environments, or, life friendly environments are common throughout the universe.

        The latter will be a more popular choice, as it suggests we could be in store to come into extra terrestrail life, be it intellegent or not, at some point, should we become a fully

        • Re:Maestro update! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by TrueBuckeye ( 675537 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:25AM (#8042631) Journal
          Also, there is the grand philisophical question involved. Are we the reason for the universe? Did God create all of this just for us or are we just another form of life in a freak universe?

          The existence of life outside of Earth is as huge a revelation to religion as the debunking of the Earth-centric model of the solar system. The spiritual ramifications are enormous, but not often talked about.

          If there is life on Mars, then suddenly Darwinism takes a huge leap and Biblical creationism, at least the most common interpretations, takes a step back. Then if there is/was life on Mars, then why not on other planets, which have been found to be far more common than we thought. And if there is life all over the universe, then it isn't too far a leap to say that some of it has evolved into sentient life forms. And now we have to ask if other intelligent, self-aware creatures have a soul. Do they have an afterlife?

          This goes on and on. Needless to say, more than scientists and geeks are interested in the findings of these missions.
          • Also, there is the grand philisophical question involved. Are we the reason for the universe? Did God create all of this just for us or are we just another form of life in a freak universe? The existence of life outside of Earth is as huge a revelation to religion as the debunking of the Earth-centric model of the solar system. The spiritual ramifications are enormous, but not often talked about.

            It's only a "huge revelation" to certain religious extremists. I, for one, am a Christian and my religion wo

          • The existence of life outside of Earth is as huge a revelation to religion as the debunking of the Earth-centric model of the solar system. Hasn't the fact that the SUN is the center of the solar system already gone a long ways towards debunking the Earth-centric model of the solar system?
          • Christianity is neutral on the question of alien life. Actually, if you don't confine your quest to this universe, the Bible is full of wilder aliens than many sci-fi authors dream up. From Angels appearing in human form, to Seraphim with 6 wings, to Living Beings covered with eyes. A major premise of Christian theology is that we are caught in the middle of a war between Angels loyal to God and the rebels. In the book of Daniel, we learn that it takes the Angel 3 weeks to travel from his world (univers

        • Water (Score:2)

          by Cujo ( 19106 )

          The Water's been found [space.com] - it's most likely in the form of ice, and it's all over the planet. The question Spirit is trying to answer is was there once a lot of LIQUID water on Mars, and if so how long ago, and for how long a duration? Gusev Crater was almost certainly a lake once.

          • Re:Water (Score:3, Informative)

            by Oddly_Drac ( 625066 )
            "The Water's been found"

            Not entirely. Spirit and Beagle were intended to confirm the existence of permafrosts all over the planet, and from first glances it does actually look like there may have one that has retreated, although the definitive tests (penetrators) were on the polar lander. The definitive answer by the Viking life experiment leader...

            ("Levin said that the formation of liquid water can happen under the environmental conditions of Mars. Indeed, that water can even exist in liquid form on

            • Water vapor? I know the pressure's low, but I would expect ice instead. Ice crystals are known to be in the atmosphere.

              Also, the Odyssey measurements are pretty much in the first meter or so of surface, IIRC. There is a lot of hydrogen down there, and it;s pretty much got to be in water (Methane or Ammonia are too volatile at those temperatures). that would mean ice, or possibly sandy brines.

              It doesn' appear that the soil cohesion is purely elecrostatic, but I think it will take a lot more data to

              • "Ice crystals are known to be in the atmosphere."

                You have my apologies, it seems that what knowledge I had of Mars has been completely overturned by the Odyssey data, and I was probably distracted by something shiny, however, one small point...

                If the deposits are as large as claimed, I would still expect some water vapour to be detected as humidity simply because the boiling point of liquids drops as pressure drops...this is going to form a tenuous atmosphere around the poles during the 'melts', I would

        • Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Fr33z0r ( 621949 )
          You know... I have a theory, looking at our sun with its orbiting bodies, and the moons orbiting *those*, we can work out the average number of satellites a given body (over a certain size) has - in this case it works out to about 10 for our solar system, an average of 10 moons per planet (I think? I worked this out a long time ago, maybe more moons have been discovered since then) - from that I made the small leap that "any celestial body over a certain size" (i.e. large enough to be classed as a planet or

      • Re:Maestro update! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by XipX ( 615675 )
        We do it because we want to know. I know I have that urge, and obviously the people at NASA have the same itch to scratch.

      • Re:Maestro update! (Score:3, Funny)

        by El ( 94934 )
        Evidence that dinasaurs once roamed the earth isn't taking us towards bringing them back. What?!? Where there is evidence, there is DNA, and where there is DNA, there is a chance we can bring the creatures back! Don't you ever go to the movies?

  • Why B&W? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Levine ( 22596 ) <levineNO@SPAMgoatse.cx> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:50AM (#8042380) Homepage
    Any particular reason NASA went with a B&W CCD for this one? I seem to recall earlier Mars missions being in full color -- then again, it may have been this 'pseudocolor' stuff as well.

    levine

    • Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:58AM (#8042437)
      a color CCD would require a sensor for each of R, G, and B pixel values. By using a monochrome CCD, they could pack as many pixels into the available space and use color filters to determine the RGB values of each pixel instead.

      essentially, they are tripling their resolution at the expense of having to take three monochrome pictures each through different color filters to get a single full color picture.

    • Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:02AM (#8042461)
      Because conventional colour is too limiting. With filter wheels, there's the possibility of far more scientific data - there's (IIRC) eleven different filters available on Spirit's pancam, instead of the integrated red, green and blue in a consumer-level CCD. There's wide-pass and narrow-pass filters, near-infra-red - they're effectively magic sunglasses which can be used to look for interesting geology from afar.

      Surprisingly few spacecraft have taken conventional colour cameras with them. Some of the Voyager colour shots of Jupiter, for instance, are definitely made up of multiple exposures taken at slightly different times - if you look at the red, green and blue channels, you can see how the clouds have moved while the exposures were being taken.

      I think the CCDs on modern telescopes are monochrome as well, with particular filters used for looking at interesting wavelengths and things like that. 'Colour' shots are again made by combining multiple exposures...

    • Re:Why B&W? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:03AM (#8042472)
      It's typical for space science applications.

      What you want on a space probe is maximal CCD chip area-- not to take things up with filters. So they have a color wheel instead. Also, the filters of ranges that the eye is sensitive to in red, green, and blue is not very useful scientifically.

      They have a choice of 8 filters on each of the pancams, and the left filters are in the visible range of light. However, there are caveats, as human visual perception is a complex thing. As a result, colors are going to be off even if a picture is shot with all 7 visual range filters.

      The image processing software I've written makes a best guess with 2/4/7 and 2/5/6 filter sets. It is pretty close, but extreme colors are wrong (the red point is shifted by about 30nm) I hope to use the cases where they've shot additional pictures (e.g. magic carpet) to improve things further for selected images in the next couple of days.

    • Re:Why B&W? (Score:3, Informative)

      by tie_guy_matt ( 176397 )
      Another reason to use a color wheel instead of having a color CCD (filters attached to each pixel) is that unfiltered silicon CCD's can see into the near infrared; they can detect light that the human eye cannot. If you use a color CCD then you basically limit the camera so it is only sensitive to light that the human eye can see. With the color wheel they get pretty color images but still have a camera that is sensitive to other wavelengths.
      • You can try this at home, by pointing a TV remote at an ordinary webcam or camcorder. You should see the LED in the remote blinking when you press a button. Some cameras can have the IR filter removed (Philips Vesta, for one) and can then pick up images under "invisible" IR illumination.
    • It's all pseudo colour; all digital camera's are. To find out how it all works and why these pics are as good as you can get (and can be just about considered true colour), check here:

      http://www.atsnn.com/marscolors.html

  • Why surprise (Score:5, Interesting)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:52AM (#8042394)
    There are some puzzles and there are surprises
    One unexpected finding was the Moessbauer spectrometer's detection of a mineral called olivine, which does not survive weathering well

    It doesn't survive weathering well in Earth like conditions. Mars, on the other hand, has extreme and totally different climate conditions and it should not be a surprise that minerals exhibit different properties.
    • I assume they thought the same processes that created the "canals" would have also got rid of the olivine. although Mars is very different to Earth right now, these processes took place a long time ago when it wouldn't have been different.
    • I've been reading "weathering" as "water erosion" by context, but I might be missing the message and point entirely. I'm interpreting that the presence of olivine is surprising given that they were hoping to find evidence of water.

  • of course it's crusty (Score:5, Funny)

    by tazanator ( 681948 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:53AM (#8042401)
    It's been waiting how long for us to visit? Come on think aboutit, it has been just hanging around for a few hundred years, that we have been looking at it, and they expect it to be soft and fresh?!?!??

  • What you can do in 3 years (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:55AM (#8042417)
    Given the current information we estimate that we will be able to travel to pluto in 3 years time.

    In today's fast-paced modern world, a mere 3 years get you:

    - to Pluto
    - a copy of Duke Nukem Forever

    or perhaps I should await my return from Pluto to get DNF ...
  • They touched down in a Walmart parking lot!

  • Mining (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GeckoFood ( 585211 ) <[geckofood] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @08:58AM (#8042435) Journal
    It would be interesting to see if mining on Mars would be a feasible (and cost-effective) venture. With the apparent iron content of the soil (hence the rust-red color), it may be a good source of mineral content for mining operations. The hard (and expensive) part would be the transport of mined material back to Earth. Could the cost be overcome by the benefits?

    • Re:Mining (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jlechem ( 613317 )
      If it were just standard ore like Iron, copper, etc I would say not. But if we found some exciting new minerals out there or some kinds that are extremely rare and valuable on earth I bet companies would be chomping at the bit to get out there.

      • Re:Mining (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Xner ( 96363 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:13AM (#8042545) Homepage
        I agree, but the presence of these materials could immensely aid in-situ fabrication of whatever you need, and help bootstrap a possible future colonization effort.

        Now we only need to get that foundry over there at a million dollars/kg ...

      • But if we found some exciting new minerals out there or some kinds that are extremely rare and valuable on earth I bet companies would be chomping at the bit to get out there.

        I would roughly estimate that it would cost $100 million to return five pounds of these magical new minerals. Can you think of anything worth $20 million/pound?

    • Re:Mining (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MyBeeswax ( 734125 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:13AM (#8042542)
      There was no plate tectonics on Mars so it is extremely unlikely that minerals got concentrated, and even if they did, there is no crustal movement to bring this stuff to the surface. I think that the mining prospects on Mars are bleak.
    • The hard (and expensive) part would be the transport of mined material back to Earth. Could the cost be overcome by the benefits?

      Nah, but this [bbc.co.uk] on the other hand... Mmmm!
    • The iron ore industry in northern Minnesota has been depressed for decades, basically. Maybe you'd pay to have the minor population centers south of Duluth sent to Mars to mine the ore we already have here?

      Lewis and Clark speculated about the value of minerals in the Rockies. Didn't spend their lives mining it, though, as without the Missouri and the Columbia hooking up, they'd have had no way to transport their raw materials out. Mining and transportation -- railways in the case of the rockies -- go hand

    • Re:Mining (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mukaikubo ( 724906 ) <gtg430b@prism.ga[ ]h.edu ['tec' in gap]> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:56AM (#8042893) Journal
      If you're going to do mining in space, you have to look at asteroids. A single small nickle-iron asteroid, assayed out, would be worth more than a trillion dollars.*


      *Note: This does not take into account the disastrous devaluation of the metals markets, which would probably send the world economy into recession, so this might be a bad idea no matter what.

    • It's simple (Score:2, Funny)

      by Walkiry ( 698192 )
      You take the minerals you're interested in, make them into giant balls and toss them towards the Earth. Some of the stuff will survive the re-entry.

      Note: Aim for Siberia or something. And don't be too greedy packing the giant balls, you don't want to overdo it, trust me ;)

  • No mystery at all (Score:4, Interesting)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:00AM (#8042445) Journal
    I mean, they're the ones who are always talking about the windstorms that plague the planet, yes?

    And for how long have these windstorms been occurring? Millions and millions of years?

    So it seems reasonable to conclude that the dust/soil on the planet is going to be fairly homogenous by now.

    They talk about the rock abrasion tool and the various spectrometers and what not, but the tool I'd like to hear about is the shovel. The dried lakebeds on Mars are no doubt little different than the dried lakebeds on Earth. To get to anything really interesting, you need to dig.

  • Airbag-trails (Score:5, Interesting)

    by l0wland ( 463243 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <dnalw0l>> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:00AM (#8042453) Journal
    "After the rover arm pressed soil down, the top layer of dust hardly moved, a finding that suggests something may be binding the dust like some type of salt or thin cement."

    Interesting, as the marks of the airbags are clearly visible on all pics. Or am I missing the point of a rover-arm having less force than a bouncing-lander-in-an-airbag?

    • Re:Airbag-trails (Score:3, Informative)

      by tommck ( 69750 )
      Well... it was falling at a pretty good clip... it's not like it was a paratrooper lightly touching down on the ground...

    • Re:Airbag-trails (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cujo ( 19106 )

      Yes, it was a much lighter (and better instrumented) touch than the airbags or the wheels.

    • The differance might be a factor of sheer. With a sideways velocity, the airbags (either from the bounch marks visible in sleepy hollow, or from where they pulled back next to the lander) have probably moved the dust to show a bit of what is underneath. This would also explain why only the last couple of lander "bounces" are readily visible from the pictures they've taken so far.

      I think the "dust" they described in the news conference yesterday is just that, the very top layer of dust thats settled ou
  • Sheesh. Mars sucks. Could it be any more dull? It's worse than Morecombe on a wet Sunday. I bet it won't be too long before the rover finds a German beach-towel, though.

  • Face on Mars? (Score:3, Funny)

    by WC as Kato ( 675505 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:05AM (#8042481)
    What I really want to see is a rover running up the Face on Mars. Who cares about water? I want to see pyramids and faces.

  • Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:05AM (#8042487) Homepage Journal
    ...which usually is considered water-reactive and thus volcanic in origin.

    If it's water-reactive why does it mean it's volcanic? I don't know anything about minerals but that doesn't sound logical to me.

    • Re:Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pacsman ( 629749 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:26AM (#8042633)
      Water reactive means it reacts with water and therefore wouldn't form in a wet environment. That means that if you find a rock with this mineral it must be igneous in nature because the other main type of rock formation occurs on seabeds, thus in the presence of water. I'd love for them to find some sandstone or limestone, that'd be a pretty clear indication of water in the past.
      • Olivine forms volcanically, and will alter quickly (on a geological scale) into another mineral called Serpentine [galleries.com], which is why finding it here is very suggestive that both during its formation and subsequence existance on Mars, the rock has remained dry. It's not such a surprise [hawaii.edu] that olivine has been found, is it?
      • Well, limestone would also be a pretty clear indicator of the presence of life in the past, too, since it's normally produced on Earth by the deposit of the remains of tiny organisms, which concentrate calcites in their shells or other structural elements. Okay, there's other ways to make limestone, but I think if there were limestone deposits on Mars, we'd see it as a lot closer to finding life in itself than just seeing it as evidence of ancient water..
    • I don't know anything about minerals either, but if all the other known ways to create rocks implied the use of water in the process, it would be logical that the only way to create a water-reactive rock would be by volcanic activity. Otherwise, the rock would be destroyed by the activity that creates it.

      J.
    • I think you can safely ditch the "thus" from that sentence to get a more accurate description. I think the poster was a bit confused - the presence of Olivine on Mars is quite widely discussed, it's volcanic in origin and reacts with water such that any traces of olivine on the surface implies there has been no (recent) liquid water - Mars was probably volcanically active more recently than it was wet.

    • Re:Water-reactive and thus volcanic? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikerich ( 120257 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @12:40PM (#8044607)
      Olivine is relatively rare on the Earth's surface and is largely restricted to volcanoes sourcing very deep magmas which are deficient in aluminium and the alkali metals such as sodium and potassium which are abundant in the Crust. So you find olivine lavas coming out of hot-spot volcanoes such as the ones in Hawaii.

      Olivine is not found in magmas that are forming at shallow depths which tend to be rich in silica. Moreover, olivine rich magma intruding into the Crust will react with aluminium, silica and alkali metals and change their composition.

      So if you find olivine you know the originating magma is coming from deep down and hasn't hung around in the Crust for very long.

      Olivine is not terribly stable under wet conditions. Olivine reacts with water to form clays and iron oxide. The results also imply that the olivine bearing rocks have not been heated in the presence of water (such as you would find in the formation of a mountain range), since olivine reacts at high temperatures in the presence of water to form serpentinite and magnetite.

      Therefore in the time since rocks were crystallised they haven't been in the presence of water.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

  • Great way to diverge into the explainable... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rcastro0 ( 241450 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:07AM (#8042497) Homepage
    ...but what about this picture [gargaro.com] ?

  • Yum! Olivine! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ljavelin ( 41345 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:12AM (#8042535)
    Yum! I remember when my Mom used to make me a big glass of Olivine when I got home from school. Just add it into a glass warm milk, and yum! Wholesome and delicious, rich in essential vitamins and minerals!

    Just imagine all that Olivine on Mars! Certainly it'd be worthwhile to travel to Mars, given an unbounded supply of ready-made food already on the surface. This, my friends, could cure world hunger!

    In fact, now that they've found that Mars has a lot of Olivine, I'd start speculating that the dust is being bound together by Tang.

  • Size of the rocks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by They_Call_Me_Spanky ( 83478 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:12AM (#8042538)
    I find it interesting all the rocks in the pictures look small enough for any human to pick up and throw. I don't see any large outcropping of boulders and such. Why isn't the variety of the rock sized greater?

    • Probably because spirit is inside a large crater which means that the geology will be fairly young compared to other parts of the surface. From memory I think the pathfinder mission landed in quite a rocky area with boulders and big rocks.

    • Re:Size of the rocks (Score:5, Informative)

      by aziraphale ( 96251 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:03AM (#8043494)
      Two things:

      1) Be very wary of judging the apparent size of things in photos taken on another planet. The density of the atmosphere, the nature of the camera lenses used on space missions, and the scale of features your brain uses to guess at size may not all be what they seem.

      2) the area around the landing site was deliberately selected to contain as few large rocks that could smash a lander to pieces as it came down as possible. Drop onto really rocky terrain, and you're looking at doing what I believe is technically known as 'a Beagle'.
    • Uh, maybe because NASA tried very hard to pick a landing site where they wouldn't land on a !@#$ boulder?

  • Looking for an animation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GeekDork ( 194851 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:14AM (#8042550)

    I've just seen a TV documentary about the rovers. One thing they had was an animation showing the differences between the first rover and the new ones. It was the old rover coming off the lander and then growing, parts being added etc., afterwards documenting how the thing has to fold to fit into the lander again, all on some blue grid surface. Does anyone know if this animation can be seen on the net somewhere?

  • May be looking through thin layer of dust? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zoney_ie ( 740061 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:20AM (#8042599)
    OK, there's microscope, spectrometers, cameras on the rover.

    Do they have a brush or scraper? Or is the rock grinder the only physical tool?

  • More good Mars Info (Score:5, Informative)

    by IPFreely ( 47576 ) <mark@mwiley.org> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:27AM (#8042644) Homepage Journal
    More Mars info here. It includes some nice 3D imaging, large zoom and pans of the latest rover images, and some nice 3D pilotable flyovers of several sites, including Olympus Mons.

    It has all the latest Mars Rover info as well, and a direct link to JPL for the latest and greatest pictures and info. www.marsquestonline.org [marsquestonline.org]
    Go hit it. It's worth a look around.

  • Mars expeditions are ultimately worthless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GonzoDave ( 743486 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:35AM (#8042701)
    A consequence of space exploration being government run is the fact that missions will be continually over funded and unambitious, as successive presidents and politicians look at NASA and the entirety of space as merely being an extremely expensive photo opportunity. It took 25 years from the invention of modern rockets to the moon landings, and in nearly 40 after that, we've done little more than send up continuous, well publicised but ultimately futile shuttle missions. Much as it pains me to say it, the future of space lies in private hands who have the ambition to(pardon the pun) reach for the stars

    " I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. " --Dr. Jerry Pournelle
    • Don't I wish!

      The ultimate and depressing reality, however, is that there's no profit in space. Wait, before you get angry, let me clarify- Yes, comms satellites and the like make gangbuster money, but the initial research and development- i.e. the rocket program of the USA- were horrendously, bleedingly expensive at the time, and profitable applications were hard to see or considered 'dreams.'

      It's much the same today. Yes, there are profitable applications, but they're already being done (LEO satellites) or far-off (asteroid mining, et alia). No business that has to answer to stockholders is going to invest in a venture that sucks up capital like a vacuum and doesn't promise any kind of return for decades. That's what government is for.

      • Re:Mars expeditions are ultimately worthless (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:35AM (#8043240) Homepage Journal
        well, it being worthless NOW doesn't mean that it will be worthless forever.

        sometime in the future the expenses will get smaller than the profits, be it due to new materials or huge amounts of cheap computing power that make it possible(or just pure lack of materials on earth which won't happen anytime near though, with all the oceanbeds and all).

        however it might take a staggeringly long time before that happens..

        • well, it being worthless NOW doesn't mean that it will be worthless forever.

          No, but until it becomes economically feasible, companies won't touch it. And it can't be shown to be economically feasible until some publically funded exploration actually DOES show this. And it's still possible that it'll NEVER be cost effective to mine/manufacture off-planet. You are correct in saying that "worthless now"!="worthless forever". But what is also true is that "worthless now"!="worth something someday".

          sometim

  • Meteorite? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scalis ( 594038 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:35AM (#8042702) Homepage
    I read at one of the links [hawaii.edu] that "Olivine is also found in many iron-nickel meteorites. Not just as small grains but as significantly sized crystals sometimes occupying over 50% of the meteorites volume."
    I do not know anything about minerals really, but if the lander is exploring a crater, couldn't this come from the meteorite that created the crater in the first place?

    • Re:Meteorite? (Score:4, Informative)

      by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <eps@ep[ ]lonb.com ['scy' in gap]> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:15AM (#8043078) Homepage
      I do not know anything about minerals really, but if the lander is exploring a crater, couldn't this come from the meteorite that created the crater in the first place?

      Probably not, the reason nasa think that the gustev crater was once an ancient lake is because there is what looks like a water channel leading into it (or maybe out of if the meteorite contained a lot of ice ?). The crater was almost certainly created by a meteorite and not by natural processes (volcanic, weather, etc.) which means that the crater must have been there before the water (if there was water). The fact that olivine reacts so easily with water seems to suggest that the their wasn't any water in the gustev crater.

  • Remembering Viking... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vudufixit ( 581911 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:50AM (#8042837)
    The Viking landers performed soil tests that were supposed to check for living organisms. Interestingly, they were inconclusive - the reactions observed to the agar solution could have either been the result of microorganisms, or unusual soil chemistry. Either Spirit and Opportunity will tell us which it is, or we'll just have to send some folks up there to check things out.

  • Once again, it raises more questions... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by confused one ( 671304 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @09:59AM (#8042924)
    The only way we'll have all the answers is to send up a team with some (live) geologists and full kit... But, that's probably 30-50 years away realistically.

  • Olivine beach (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kyoorius ( 16808 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @10:28AM (#8043179) Homepage
    There is actually a green sand beach on the big island of Hawaii.
    It is little known, and difficult to get to, but a long drive down
    an unpaved road, and two or so mile hike will get you to it.

    I once met an minerologist gathering samples there.
    He told me the beach was green because of a large olivine vein
    which was eroded over the years by the ocean waves.

    pics: http://www.techfreakz.org/blacksand/

  • Somewhat confused on olivine (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrIcee ( 550834 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:17AM (#8043629) Homepage
    The article states...
    • There seems to be a brewing mystery centered around the geology of Mars, in that it has water-formed minerals like hematite, but also has water-reactive minerals like olivine. This seems to indicate that flowing water can't be there, particularly if olivine remains.

    I live on an active volcano which, in some erruptions, produces large quantities of olivine (peridot) crystals. We can see the crystals not only on dry land, walking on various older (tens to hundreds of years) flows... but more interesting is Green Sand Beach in South Point - Green Sand is an old cone that sits at sealevel, partially within the water. The sands are a stunning and sparkling olive green and one can find crystals from pin-head sized up to small stones (every now and then someone finds larger gem-quality pieces).

    Since it's well known that olivine can appear within certain types of volcano flows - i'm confused to the water reactive portion - we certainly find olivine in/near/around water (I do consider the pacific ocean to be water). Furthermore, portions of this island receive upwards to 200 inches of rain a year - and there's plenty of olivine.

    Can someone explain to me why the presence of olivine somehow precludes water? It certainly doesn't here in Hawaii (though perhaps on a much larger time scale, it does?)

    • Re:Somewhat confused on olivine (Score:4, Informative)

      by sean.peters ( 568334 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:51AM (#8043991) Homepage
      Can someone explain to me why the presence of olivine somehow precludes water? It certainly doesn't here in Hawaii (though perhaps on a much larger time scale, it does?

      You've answered your own question here... it's a matter of timing. Olivine rapidly degrades in the presence of water... on a geologic time scale. In human timescales, you don't notice this. That's why you can find green sand beaches on the Big Island - as you note, it's one big active volcano, and the olivine there was relatively recently produced. Gustev crater is thought to be a geologically old feature, and if water was present there, it should have been there a long time ago (based on current theories of the planet's climatological evolution). The fact that that olivine was laid down a long time ago and hasn't shown signs of water induced breakdown, means that water probably hasn't been there since olivine was formed.

  • Mars Down Under (Score:3, Funny)

    by tds67 ( 670584 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:52AM (#8044004)
    A second puzzle is why the soil seems so crusty.

    Wouldn't it be strange to find out that the rover has landed on an ancient pair of giant Martian underwear?

  • One possible explination for the olivine found.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by lecca ( 84194 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @12:36PM (#8044541) Homepage
    "Olivine is also found in many iron-nickel meteorites. Not just as small grains but as significantly sized crystals sometimes occupying over 50% of the meteorites volume. Thinly cut slices of these meteorites are extremely attractive with the polished steel gray of the iron and the embedded grains of gemmy green olivine. The effect produces the closest mineral equilalent to stained glass artwork."
    From http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/oli vine/olivine.htm

    Perhapse the olivine is from whatever made that crator?

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