Mars Express Begins Search for Water on Mars 198
H_Fisher writes "The BBC reports that the Mars Express spacecraft team is ready to deploy a radar antenna to search for traces of water and ice beneath the Martian surface. The deployment has been delayed for a year due to concerns that the unfurled antenna might damage the spaceship. Mission controllers are optimistic; perhaps the ESA will be the next to make an important discovery about the red planet?"
Did they try the store? (Score:2, Funny)
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:2)
That's weird, I ate a lot of Mars bars for a week and I couldn't shit at all for a couple days.
Exactly. How useful is a sack with a whole in the bottom?
Ya gotta shop around... (Score:2)
Heh... (Score:1, Funny)
Well duh, like it is on earth: you have the surface of the ocean (where it meets the air), and most of the water is below that. Go figure (gravity and all).
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Water is nice but (Score:2)
Better find it soon (Score:3, Funny)
This'll be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the radars on this puppy might just punch down - maybe only a few feet - and get a hard f*ing ice reflection, which would put paid to all the surmise and deduction. Then we would know its still there.
Re:This'll be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I also might add that this means large quantities of water. Water in small amounts has been visible at the poles in winter for years, and there are numerous pictures of water frost from the surface from Viking 2 in 1976. So there is water, known to some level of certainty, since the invention of the telescope.
It's an interesting additional input, but it's hardly a new discovery.
BTW - don't count the chickens before they are hatched. The type of struts used for the antenna don't usually like being stowed for too long - and now it has been stowed for a year or so longer than intended. Waiting may not have been the conservative move.
It'll probably be OK.
Brett
Re:This'll be good. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This'll be good. (Score:5, Informative)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_p
among many others.
Brett
Re:This'll be good. (Score:2)
Re:This'll be good. (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting way to put it since they were looking for land not too long ago.
Re:This'll be good. (Score:2)
Radar Sounding (Score:2)
AFAIK, all the "water" finds on Mars have been indirect - albeit very convincing - evidence of surface water in the past.
Radar sounding will produce no more direct evidence of water/ice than this [nasa.gov] or this. [msss.com] Radar just adds another plodding data point to something that has already been established, by NASA by the way.
Maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe... (Score:2)
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!"
Re:Maybe... (Score:1)
Let's Bottle & Sell It! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let's Bottle & Sell It! (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
Contamination (Score:5, Interesting)
If we then "discover" bacteria on Mars, imagine the excitement, and the loss. The loss of our chance to truly know if it was there already. The loss will go unnoticed, though, as anyone broaching the question will be lumped with the Creationists, an object of scorn.
Re:Contamination (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Contamination (Score:2)
Stick to Userfriendly and penguin references, please.
Re:Contamination (Score:2)
Re:Contamination (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Contamination (Score:2)
Re:Contamination (Score:5, Informative)
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01se
recounting the discovery of common strep (Streptococcus mitis) that was left in the camera on Surveyor 3 and returned 3 years later on Apollo 12, surviving the equally difficult environment on the moon.
This really tells you two things - first, that it's possible for bacteria with at least some protection to take the raw space environment for a while, and second, that although there are at least some consideration for preventing contaimination on most if not all landers (including Surveyor) that stuff slips through the cracks. They didn't pay nearly the attention to it on Surveryor that they had on others before and since (some of the early Ranger missions had failures suspected to have been caused by the sterilization procedures damaging the equipment) but they didn't just sneeze in it and shoot it off, either.
Brett
(and yes, space is sort of my personal hobby horse (not to mention my primary source of income), so please forgive my multiple posts!)
Re:Contamination (Score:2)
Re:Contamination (Score:2)
Premature (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, it's the antennas for the survey instrument that aren't out yet. While the engineers seem very optimistic that the antenna deployment will go well and allow the survey to begin, there also seems to be some trepidation that the deployment could seriously damage the spacecraft.
Wait another two weeks, then celebrate the start of the search.
Re:Premature (Score:2)
How lame."
It would have been lame, but I wrote it with a sense of post-modernist irony!
This could be... (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing [wikipedia.org]
Start The Reactor (Score:2)
I can see the story now: Microwave beams from MARSIS radar melts ice causing chain reaction, releasing frozen atmosphere and water.
"Quaid...Quaid...Start the reactor." [lambtron.com] .
Re:Start The Reactor (Score:2)
I hope though... (Score:2)
please help me (Score:2)
duh? ever seen the icecaps? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:1)
Re:What? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:2)
A few years ago I made a little mistake like that. I had opened a bunch of Slashdot windows to different stories and replied to the wrong one. The mods were having fun at my expense. I'd ask why I was modded down, they'd mod that off topic. Finally, somebody told me to scroll up.
Yep, it was bonehead stupidity on my end, but I really wish I hadn't been modded down 5 or 6 times before finally getting told.
Re:What? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I don't know if I would mod you arrogantly misleading, but perhaps grossly simplifying.
I mean, take hydrogen, oxygen, two very abundant elements in the solar system, and bam!, you have water.
It's not this easy. As I look around the room, I see gads of oxygen and hydrogen molecules. (Yes, I have very good eyesight!) I have bammed many times tonight, and yet still no water. Okay, some sweat on my Coke can--oh, and in my Coke--but that was water already formed; it doesn't count.
It's not like water just automatically spontaneously forms from hydrogen and oxygen (that whole entropy thing), it only happens under a specific set of circumstances as a specific reaction. Most of the hydrogen and oxygen in, on, and around the Earth is not water, although a lot of it is. It's contained in other molecules such as O2 (what we breathe in), CO2 (what we breathe out, of which there is LOTS on Mars), H2 (potential fuel panacea and, oh, what also blew the Hindenburg up), SiO2 (sand, of which we have plenty), and so on.
And we're not talking about looking for just a few free-floating water molecules. It's generally accepted (okay I admit, only by everyone I've asked, which is a group composed entirely of myself currently) that when one talks about "water on Mars," he or she is referring to a rather large collection of the stuff, such as in a lake, an icecap, or even an ice cube.
So no, I don't think it's so readily apparent that there is water on Mars, otherwise I have a tough time believing that scientists are so gung ho to spend billions of dollars to prove something that everyone knows is so painfully obvious.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me, but you don't know what you're talking about. Entropy isn't the problem here. Entropy might not be favourable for the reaction H2 + 0.5O2 -> H2O, bit since enthalpy is very much so, the whole reaction is, at least at reasonable temperatures, very favoured.
The reason why having H2 and O2 isn't a guarantee to have water is twofold:
1) activation energy
2) existance of even more stable p
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Yes, spectrographic studies have implied that molecular water may be highly abundant in the universe, but that's obviously not the same thing.
And there's a theory that Europe might have a highly saline liquid sea beneath its surface (there's electromagnetic evidence to that effect), but it's never been observed.
There's a huge difference between thinking that water migh
Re:So... (Score:2)
Not to mention that the material behaves like ice, shines like ice, has the density of ice, a
Re:So... (Score:2)
We can start with "there's no such thing as an ice line." What you're referring to is the water absorption line, which indicates nothing more than the presence of water molecules. A million tons of ice, or just molecular water in the outer fringes of the atmospheres in question? Nobody knows. Nobody has
Re:So... (Score:2)
We've never been to Europa. We've never landed a robot on Europa. We've never even surveyed Europa from orbit. We don't have the foggiest idea what the surface of Europa is made of. A press release from 1995 stating without supporting evidence that Europa's got ice on it ain't gonna cut it.
Re:So... (Score:2)
This is why I bemoan the current state of science education in this country.
Yes, you can see something forming the tail of a comet. Do you know what it is? The theory of comets as volatile objects goes back to the 1700s. The idea has been bounced around ever since, notably coming up short when Schiaparelli announced his hypothesis that the Perseid meteors might be fragments of a comet.
We sent probes through the coma of Halley's Comet in 198
Re:So... (Score:2)
No water was detected from the July 31 crash of Lunar Prospector into the Moon.
Or you could just read the actual release:
Sorry, but indirect measure
Re:So... (Score:2)
This has been known to be false for about 15 years. If you look at a videotape of the Hindenburg fire, there's a very visible flame, especially right around when the announcer says "oh, the humanity!"
Hydrogen burns invisibly.
The History Channel has an interesting special covering this. It turns out that the problem was almost certainly the aluminum powder gel in cellulose that they used to waterproof and leakproof the canvas shell.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Actually, I have. Did you bother to stop and think that a tesla coil's power stops seeming huge when we're talking about 1/10th of a lightning bolt's amperage, which I had previously pointed out to you?
Just because they address something doesn't mean they address it accurately.
Go back, read the whole thing, then come back here.
I could say the same to you.
The facts are that cellulose ace
Re:So... (Score:2)
The incendiary paint theory was not due to lightning, and for good reason: craft like the Hindenburg had been struck by lightning several times previously, with no ill effects. In fact, it is a bit silly to picture such a huge craft *not* getting struck by lightning. Consequently, the theory was about an
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Please publish so that the world can be enlightened. You can start by presenting the proof that you are a conscious being. Or that someone else is. One of the interesting problems of conscious thought is that everyone knows what it means, but there is NO way to prove that you actually possess it.
As to the h2o on mars, we know its there, just like we know there's ice on/in jupiter (maybe even in liquid form - Jupiter is more of a failed brown star than a
Re:So... (Score:2)
I suppose there should be some clarification as to what constitutes a discovery of water on an extraterrestrial object. There's no dou
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Now that we're (possibly) getting closer to artificial intelligence, how are we ever going to prove that a program is self-aware, and not just feeding us stuff from its' own programming?
A lot of science fiction deals with this. For example, say it becomes possible to upload ourselves into a computer
Re:OT: Hindenburg (Score:2)
Hindenburg coating = cellulose acetate, a relatively poor burning material (the reason that so much of the Hindenburg's skin survived and is in the hands of collectors today, despite the huge fire).
Thermite = 3 to 1 iron oxide to aluminum in a fine powdered mixture.
Hindenburg coating: iron oxide only on the upper side of the craft; even there, the ratio was 4 parts Aluminum to 1 part iron oxide, and in separate, unblended layers
There are a lot of stupid myths [colorado.edu] abo
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is rather facile logic. By the same token we should expect life on the moon shouldn't we? After all it was "part of the earth". The Moon was formed in the fiery inferno of a planetoid collision with earth, any water that didn't volatilize off and remained after coalescence couldn't be readily held by the weak gravity and intense solar irradiation at its (relatively) close orbit to the sun. Furthermore, the only place where water has been SUGGESTED to possibly occur on the moon is at the poles in permanently shaded bottoms of craters in the form of hydrated minerals and in fine and sparse ice dust among the dirt. There is nothing absolutely certain and derministic about the presence of water on any solar system body (except earth) without examining that object first. Io (right next to europa!) has no water because its a flaming hell full of superhot volcanoes produced by the tidal flexing of its mantle; an effect from the orbits of Europa and its proximity to Jupiter. This is a completely non-intuitive phenomenon and no one really suspected it was happening until we went there with the Voyagers.
"Same goes for carbon which is why if a planet's not drenched in water, ten to one it's flooded with methane or some other hydrocarbon."
I wouldn't take THAT bet! The only place we know of in the solar system which is "flooded with hydrocarbons" is Titan. An absence of water is absolutely by no means a determinant factor in whether a world has lots of hydrocarbons! (eg. Venus, the Moon, Mercury, Io, Phobos, Neptune, Jupiter...... all have no water and NO huge amounts of hydrocarbons!) The solar system seldom lends itself to easy characterization by the application of overly simple maxims of the sort you seem to have affection toward.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Basically there's about as much water vapor in Jupiter's atmosphere, in terms of partial pressure, as there is phosphine in ours.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Facile means "easily comprehended," or "presented in a pleasant form" (as opposed to a difficult form.) Exercises left to the reader are exercises for which the author could not or would not provide a facile explanation, for example.
Perhaps you meant "fallacious," given that grandparent was engaging in hasty generalization?
Re:So... (Score:2)
Though, fallacious also works.
Re:So... (Score:2)
This is why one shouldn't attempt to learn words from dictionaries. The tense in which you're interpreting that is incorrect. Evaluating a tic tac toe board is facile, because a decision can be arrived at without care, effort, or significant examination. One particular evaluation of a tic tac toe board, however, cannot be
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
In my prior example of a tic tac toe board, then, the tense becomes obvious: to evaluate a tic tac to board is any of those three things, but the evaluation had of a particular board is else described.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
facile
1483, from M.Fr. facile "easy," from L. facilis "easy to do" and, of persons, "pliant, courteous," from facere "to do" (see factitious). Facilitate is from 1611.
facile princeps
1834, from L., lit. "easily first." An acknowledged leader or chief.
facility
c.1425, from M.Fr. facilité, from L. facilitatem, from facilis "easy" (see facile). Its sense in Eng. moved from "genteelness" to "opp
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
I bet you'll be even angrier when you find out what Hesiod's name actually means.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Please take a chemistry course. Oxygen and hydrogen don't just spontaneously form water. You have to nudge the solution over it's activation barrier before the two will react. Of course the activation barrier depends on many variables.
Just because something can happen doesn't necessarily mean that it will happen.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Unless the temperature is very low, the reaction will happen in an explosive manner. And even under adverse conditions, it will happen, albeit slowly.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Technically oxygen and hydrogen do form water spontaneously (keep in mind spontaneous doesn't indicate a time scale). It's a very slow process though. I just
Re:So... (Score:2)
Whereas you are correct, your tone is utterly unwarranted. Converting hydrogen and oxygen to water can be accomplished many ways, one of which is burning, and given that essentially any planet with an atmosphere will generate lightning, it's pretty damned difficult to imagi
Re:So... (Score:2)
I never said there wasn't any water on other planets; I was merely pointing out that it isn't impossible for a planet with oxygen and hydrogen to have no water. In fact it's very possible. The planet can contain enough thermal energy, internally and externally, and have a low enough pressure to break O-H
Re:So... (Score:2)
Something one often needs age to learn is that one's tone is frequently not what one intends for it to be. Arguing with the observer what the observed tone of one's own voice is is naïve.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Troll Alert (Score:2)
Some "trolls" are designed to make you think. This one obviously got a LOT of people thinking. Or would you rather that everyone be a knee-jerk same-opinion fan-boi to whatever is currently fashionable?
But it's easier to scream "troll alert" than to think, isn't it, Mr. AC?
Re:Mars Express? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Watch where you point that thing (Score:4, Funny)
If they were actually intelligent, they'd construe that as an act of war!
Re:But it's NOT RED! (Score:2)
Re:But it's NOT RED! (Score:4, Informative)
The images are not recoloured. It is simply a product of swapping the red channel for an infra-red channel as NASA often does.
This graph [nasa.gov] shows the reflectance of each of the colours on the calibration target. Notice how the blue target relects infra-red light in the region of 400-500mm.
When taking most science photos, more often than not they use the infra-red filter. When putting together pictures for the press they use the infra-red channel rather than red. The upshot of this is that particular blues reflect strongly in infra-red and come out in the final picture as red.
You can see a wonderful example in this picture [nasa.gov] which shows the blue insulation tape as pink, and the usually blue NASA logo as red.
They're not modifying the images, just using the filters most useful for science applications.
Re:But it's NOT RED! (Score:2)
Re:Culpability (Score:2)
Re:Great news...but wait, give this a thought (Score:2)