A Space Rock Smashed Into Mars' Equator - and Revealed Chunks of Ice (cnn.com) 39
The mission of NASA's robotic lander InSight "is nearing an end as dust obscures its solar panels," reports CNN. "In a matter of weeks, the lander won't be able to send a beep to show it's OK anymore."
"Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store." When Mars rumbled beneath InSight's feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake. The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple thousand miles away. The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet, and it revealed glimmering chunks of ice in an entirely unexpected place — near the warm Martian equator.
The chunks of ice — the size of boulders — "were found buried closer to the warm Martian equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the planet," CNN explained earlier this week. The article also adds that ice below the surface of Mars "could be used for drinking water, rocket propellant and even growing crops and plants by future astronauts. And the fact that the ice was found so near the equator, the warmest region on Mars, might make it an ideal place to land crewed missions to the red planet." Interestingly, they note that scientists only realized it was a meteoroid strike (and not an earthquake) when "Before and after photos captured from above by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling Mars since 2006, spotted a new crater this past February." A crater that was 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep... When scientists connected the dots from both missions, they realized it was one of the largest meteoroid strikes on Mars since NASA began studying the red planet.... The journal Science published two new studies describing the impact and its effects on Thursday....
"The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust," said Liliya Posiolova, orbital science operations lead for the orbiter at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, in a statement....
Researchers estimated the meteoroid, the name for a space rock before it hits the ground, was about 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters). While this would have been small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, the same can't be said for Mars, which has a thin atmosphere only 1% as dense as Earth's.... Some of the material blasted out of the crater landed as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
Teams at NASA also captured sound from the impact, so you can listen to what it sounds like when a space rock hits Mars. The images captured by the orbiter, along with seismic data recorded by InSight, make the impact one of the largest craters in our solar system ever observed as it was created.
"Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store." When Mars rumbled beneath InSight's feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake. The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple thousand miles away. The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet, and it revealed glimmering chunks of ice in an entirely unexpected place — near the warm Martian equator.
The chunks of ice — the size of boulders — "were found buried closer to the warm Martian equator than any ice that has ever been detected on the planet," CNN explained earlier this week. The article also adds that ice below the surface of Mars "could be used for drinking water, rocket propellant and even growing crops and plants by future astronauts. And the fact that the ice was found so near the equator, the warmest region on Mars, might make it an ideal place to land crewed missions to the red planet." Interestingly, they note that scientists only realized it was a meteoroid strike (and not an earthquake) when "Before and after photos captured from above by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling Mars since 2006, spotted a new crater this past February." A crater that was 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep... When scientists connected the dots from both missions, they realized it was one of the largest meteoroid strikes on Mars since NASA began studying the red planet.... The journal Science published two new studies describing the impact and its effects on Thursday....
"The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust," said Liliya Posiolova, orbital science operations lead for the orbiter at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, in a statement....
Researchers estimated the meteoroid, the name for a space rock before it hits the ground, was about 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters). While this would have been small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, the same can't be said for Mars, which has a thin atmosphere only 1% as dense as Earth's.... Some of the material blasted out of the crater landed as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
Teams at NASA also captured sound from the impact, so you can listen to what it sounds like when a space rock hits Mars. The images captured by the orbiter, along with seismic data recorded by InSight, make the impact one of the largest craters in our solar system ever observed as it was created.
If only there was an energy source (Score:4, Funny)
Re: If only there was an energy source (Score:1)
Nuclear fusion will not be solved so easily (Score:1)
There's been considerable work on nuclear fusion as an energy source and by all known physics we can make it work. The problem is that the reactor would have to be very large. How big? I remember running some numbers once and I recall the minimum diameter of the reactor being wider than a Nimitz class carrier. I remember that because the numbers came out of a US Navy nuclear propulsion research project. I was wondering if this reactor could even fit on some of the largest ships we've ever built.
Maybe t
Re: (Score:2)
If only there was an energy source that we could use to vaporize the water trapped in the core.
QUAID!!!
I think, first you'd need a thicker atmosphere to keep it, otherwise it would partially refreeze or be destroyed by UV and lost to space.
What Martian Defense Force doing? (Score:2)
How could they let this rock smash into their homeworld? Has their been a change in leadership? The last several probes from Earth successfully landed on the Red Planet, and now we find even space rocks are getting through.
Perhaps an investigation is needed.
MMGA (Score:2)
Make Mars Great Again
Re: (Score:2)
Morty: Goddammit, an alien spider just bit my finger!
Rick: It's an alien cliff. You can just say spider.
Re:Dear CNN, /. editors ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A Space Rock Smashed Into Mars ...
Seriously, where else would it come from? So, you can just say "rock" -- or, more precisely, "meteor", which means "space rock".
Since you're attempting to be precise, you should know that before a space rock enters an atmosphere, it's a "meteroid". When it becomes incandescent and you see it as a streak of light across the sky, it's a "meteor". If it survives that and hits the ground, it's a "meteorite".
From the first paragraph quoted in TFS: The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet. Later in TFS, Researchers estimated the meteoroid, the name for a space rock before it hits the ground, was about 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters).
You can argue over whether the crater was left by a meteoroid or a meteorite, but it wasn't left by a meteor.
Re: (Score:2)
The "meteor" stage on Mars actually really really sucks due to the atmospheric density.
No brilliant fireworks on Mars :(
How far is the nearest rover from it? (Score:2)
Have the landing sites of upcoming rovers been determined already? This seems like a good place to send a rover.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: CNN as source for a science story ? Really ? (Score:3)
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And Nerds care about the important facts in a science story.
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When I'm on /. I do!
Re:CNN as source for a science story ? Really ? (Score:5, Insightful)
They even fail to mention that it is WATER ice, a crucial point.
TFS: The article also adds that ice below the surface of Mars "could be used for drinking water...." I think that clarifies what kind of ice it is. Crucial, indeed.
If you troubled yourself to read TFA, you'd have known that the NASA source quoted in the CNN article never directly referred to the ice as water ice. Maybe you should write a letter to the NASA director instead of bitching about CNN.
Re:CNN as source for a science story ? Really ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's doubly wrong, however.
It's not pure ice, and it probably can't be used for drinking water.
Mars has a serious issue with perchlorates, and they are not conducive to human health and wellness. Theoretically you can filter them out, but there are huge unanswered questions about what it would take from both a technological standpoint, a power standpoint, and whether you can get it pure enough for drinking, irrigation, and general human use.
More critically, they're in the dust layer over the entire planet. So even if you can get your water clean and pure, can you make sure it stays that way? And can you keep the toxic dust out of all the habitable spaces? Because if you can't do that, there's no need for drinking water.
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It's doubly wrong, however.
It's not pure ice, and it probably can't be used for drinking water.
Mars has a serious issue with perchlorates, and they are not conducive to human health and wellness. Theoretically you can filter them out, but there are huge unanswered questions about what it would take from both a technological standpoint, a power standpoint, and whether you can get it pure enough for drinking, irrigation, and general human use.
More critically, they're in the dust layer over the entire planet. So even if you can get your water clean and pure, can you make sure it stays that way? And can you keep the toxic dust out of all the habitable spaces? Because if you can't do that, there's no need for drinking water.
I doubt anyone thought it was pure enough to drink.
As for the difficulty in filtering it into drinkable water... maybe we can worry about that once we figure out how to get humans there in one piece with enough equipment so they can survive long enough to worry about long term water supplies.
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It's doubly wrong, however.
It's not pure ice, and it probably can't be used for drinking water.
Mars has a serious issue with perchlorates, and they are not conducive to human health and wellness. Theoretically you can filter them out, but there are huge unanswered questions about what it would take from both a technological standpoint, a power standpoint, and whether you can get it pure enough for drinking, irrigation, and general human use.
More critically, they're in the dust layer over the entire planet. So even if you can get your water clean and pure, can you make sure it stays that way? And can you keep the toxic dust out of all the habitable spaces? Because if you can't do that, there's no need for drinking water.
It could be good to know where there are perchlorates and water present.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.10... [pnas.org]
The Martian Part 2: Mark Watney on the help line (Score:1)
Andy Weir, the author of "The Martian", was asked about perchlorates on Mars after his book came out and commented that they'd be a problem but a not very big one. They weren't known about when he wrote the book so it wasn't a plot point. Later reflection and study told him that it might be a bit sickening if crops grown in it were eaten over time, and could possibly be filtered out from the drinking water. It would not likely be deadly but could make people sick. If piled on a bunch of other issues, li
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You are correct. Pure water cannot exist on Mars. The lower pressure of the atmosphere means pure water changes to its gaseous state at -5C/23F. Water must be extremely cold and locked in its solid state, or mixed with perchlorates to raise the boiling point above the current environmental temperature. Pure water on Mars is almost like Dry Ice (frozen CO2) here on Earth. It wants to go directly from its solid state to its gaseous state, with the difference that water does have a liquid state that human
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Maybe you should think harder before making foolish comments.
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They even fail to mention that it is WATER ice, a crucial point.
TFS: The article also adds that ice below the surface of Mars "could be used for drinking water...." I think that clarifies what kind of ice it is. Crucial, indeed.
If you troubled yourself to read TFA, you'd have known that the NASA source quoted in the CNN article never directly referred to the ice as water ice. Maybe you should write a letter to the NASA director instead of bitching about CNN.
What's weird is that the NASA article
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/j... [nasa.gov]
begins with a picture with text below that says "Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater on Mar"
The CNN article
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/27... [cnn.com]
shows the same photo with text "Boulder-size ice chunks can be seen scattered around and outside the new crater's rim"
Notice that the CNN photo is edited to look like it was taken with a cellphone. WTF is up with that?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The NASA photo is much larger; CNN reduced the size for a better fit to their article, and probably upped the compression as well . I wish you hadn't mentioned cellphones, though -- brace yourself for a slew of comments from people who think their iPhone takes better pictures than the James Webb Space Telescope.
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The NASA photo is much larger; CNN reduced the size for a better fit to their article, and probably upped the compression as well . I wish you hadn't mentioned cellphones, though -- brace yourself for a slew of comments from people who think their iPhone takes better pictures than the James Webb Space Telescope.
Thanks for the heads-up.
I'll just stay on https://www.reddit.com/r/CatsA... [reddit.com] for the next few days.
Bummer! (Score:5, Funny)
Tons of ice and the next coke is 95.255 million km away.
Listen to the impact sound here. (Score:2)
Wot? No oil? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Finding oil would be great. Because it would prove life existed in the past!
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Titan! Not oil, per se, but lots of hydrocarbons.
Annoyance (Score:2)
It seems a waste they chose not to include a dust brush on this mission. They could have extended operations for months or years with a "broom" made from less than a gram of brush bristles mounted on the arm.
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Mars dust is sticky, a simple brush may not work, merely smudge around. A future probe could send multiple techniques to test.