Rover Accidentally Uncovers Mars Hydrothermal Vent

The rover Spirit has been dragging one wheel around the surface of Mars for some time. One of the resulting gouges revealed a mineral deposit which was probably caused by a hydrothermal vent. This implies a large amount of water was present when the vent was active.

Re:Kudos!

[DiSKiLLeR]

I'm positive I remember reading something about that too...

Personally, I think they should mass produce more of those rovers and blast them off to mars.... spirit and opportunity were sent to two very boring places on mars that were deemed as safe as possible to land after so many previous failures.

We should be sending rovers nearer to the poles, to olympus mobs, to valles marineris... etc. Think of the fascinating stuff we'd find if we actually sent rovers somewhere INTERESTING.

Re:Kudos!

[FurtiveGlancer]

Put another way, learning from a broken, dragging wheel clearly demonstrates how very little we know about our neighbor.

Meta Comment

[Number6.2]

Come on, Editors. This is big Geek news. Surely this deserves an expanded box on the main page and not just a single freaking line.

(or is that just the way it looks with my preferences? I'll accept brick-bats if I've done something stupid. However...)

Re:Kudos!

[Free the Cowards]

If it took me years to get to my neighbors I probably wouldn't know them very well either.

Re:Imagine what *people* could learn?

[Original Replica]

Right now, they wouldn't learn anything, because they would be dead. If NASA is dicking around with anything, it would be the ISS. Haul that low orbit pile of resources into a much more stable orbit, and then use it for parts/construction platform for a station with centrifugal gravity and as close to a closed ecosystem as we can manage. [esa.int] Until we improve those technologies, to the level of near permanent space habitats, then multi-year space exploration will be the sole domain of robots.