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Mars rover's first rock samples reveal lengthy water exposure
upi ^ | Paul Brinkmann

Posted on 09/11/2021 7:38:34 AM PDT by MarvinStinson

The first two rock samples examined by NASA's Mars rover Perseverance give scientists a firm belief that water inundated Jezero Crater for a sustained period of time, the agency announced Friday.

"We determined salt granules in the rock indicate it was exposed to water," Julia Goreva, a NASA scientist for the rover program, said in a news conference from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The rocks, drilled Monday and Wednesday, came from an igneous or volcanic rock. The agency previously knew that water once filled the crater, but not for how long.

The salt deposits mean NASA can now rule out a sudden "flash in the pan" water event.

"It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment," said Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission, said in the release. "It's a big deal that the water was there a long time."

The rover sampled a rock NASA dubbed Rochette on a ridge named Artuby. The two samples are named Montdenier and Montagnac after a French mountain and region, respectively.

Scientists chose the Rochette drilling site after a previous attempt to drill a sample failed because the brittle rock target crumbled.

The samples may be dropped on the Martian surface for a future rover to retrieve and launch into space, where another spacecraft would catch them and return them to Earth. Ultimately, the goal is to use advanced equipment on Earth to analyze the rocks for signs of ancient life on Mars.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; catastrophism; cultofmars; mars; science; water
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To: knarf

what happened to the H2O? Global warming caused by humanoids. After destroying Mars , they built a spaceship and travelled to the next closest planet ... /s


21 posted on 09/11/2021 9:04:58 AM PDT by Ikeon (Hate your life? Try socialism, at least you wont be alone anymore!😃)
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To: knarf
what happened to the good ol' H2O ?

It evaporated and floated into the upper atmosphere, where solar ultraviolet light tended to break up the water vapor molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen was swept into space by solar wind. The oxygen combined with carbon to become Mars' current CO2 atmosphere, and with any exposed iron in the soil to produce rust (which is why Mars looks so red)

22 posted on 09/11/2021 9:18:09 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (A Leftist can't enjoy life unless they are controlling, hurting, or destroying others)
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To: MarvinStinson

That first photo looks like the holes that sand strikers would live in on the sea floor......


23 posted on 09/11/2021 9:25:41 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (Without potatoes, life has no meaning......)
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To: SauronOfMordor
If it was once there ....... and then evaporated .......

Why ?

Why didn't it just stay there ?

24 posted on 09/11/2021 9:31:37 AM PDT by knarf (qa)
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To: knarf
Some of it's still there, but underground.

If Mars had a thicker atmosphere in the past that got "blown off" by the solar wind, then it's likely that a lot of the water just evaporated. The Martian atmospheric pressure today is far too low for liquid water to stick around. (Water boils at room temperature on earth at around 65,000 feet altitude. The Martian atmospheric pressure is equivalent to that on earth at just over 100,000 feet.)

25 posted on 09/11/2021 10:17:13 AM PDT by Campion (What part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?)
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To: knarf

Atmospheric pressure on earth's surface is 101 kPa. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 0.61 kPa. As you can see, at 0.61 kPa, liquid water (purple) basically can't exist. Below about 0 degrees C you have ice, above that you have vapor.

26 posted on 09/11/2021 10:23:51 AM PDT by Campion (What part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?)
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To: MarvinStinson

Of course Mars had water. What do you think was in all those canals? Somebody probably took the drain plug out.


27 posted on 09/11/2021 10:26:51 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Campion

So, what’s with all the water chatter on Mars about ?


28 posted on 09/11/2021 10:28:49 AM PDT by knarf (qa)
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To: knarf
  1. If Mars once-upon-a-time had liquid water on the surface (under a thicker atmosphere), then maybe it had life then, too.
  2. If Mars has water today (as subsurface ice or maybe even liquid water deep underground), that has implications for human exploration. The less you have to import from earth, the easier it is to support a long-duration human presence on the planet.
So far, we know that Mars has CO2 (in the atmosphere), excess oxygen (in rocks containing perchlorate salts), the trace minerals (like iron and phosphorus) that living things need, and some sunlight. Add water. All you need to grow food is a structure to hold an atmosphere (think dome) and maybe some artificial heat (think nuclear reactor).
29 posted on 09/11/2021 11:04:01 AM PDT by Campion (What part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?)
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To: Campion

AND A SEED


30 posted on 09/11/2021 11:10:32 AM PDT by knarf (qa)
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To: knarf
Well sure, but those would have to be imported from earth, as well as quite a few other things.

Water is pretty dense, as you know. Very expensive to import, and you would need a lot of it, even if you recycle every drop. Supplying it locally would be very important.

31 posted on 09/11/2021 11:14:56 AM PDT by Campion (What part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?)
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To: EEGator
We need more money.

You just discovered NASA's mission....

Bleed the suckers dry...
32 posted on 09/11/2021 11:19:20 AM PDT by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: Campion
I'm losing you.

There was never life on Mars.

33 posted on 09/11/2021 1:38:27 PM PDT by knarf (qa)
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To: Campion

Salt is a precipitate from water. And like the guys at NASA said - it is long term. Not just some freak flash flood (melting comet???).

And of course it isn’t proof of life on mars, but it does raise the possibility of sustaining a Mars base sometime in the future and grow crops brought up from earth.


34 posted on 09/11/2021 1:46:32 PM PDT by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant. Never Fearful.)
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To: knarf

Agree that it’s unlikely. But how do you know for sure unless you look?


35 posted on 09/11/2021 4:26:16 PM PDT by Campion (What part of "shall not be infringed" don't they understand?)
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To: Campion
I'll give y'that.

But not one red tax cent to research the possibility of life on Mars .... we're still undecided about the sexual preferences of the Madagascar house fly.

I have no problem with Ingenuity and runnin' around on solar power and sampling stuff with some very cool analytical stuff inside.

36 posted on 09/11/2021 4:40:35 PM PDT by knarf (qa)
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I'll reiterate that Mars has never been a wetter world possibly capable of sustaining life. It does however have microbial life in the soil, as was shown by the Viking lander decades ago (and then denied by NASA ever since).
Why is Mars red?
by Hazel Muir
"There is something of a paradox about Mars," agrees Joshua Bandfield of Arizona State University in Tempe. His team recently showed that the planet has no large deposits of carbonates, which should have formed if giant pools of water had persisted on the surface. Bandfield suggests that liquid water must have occasionally burst out of the ground, carving channels and gullies, but that it quickly froze again in the frigid Martian climate.
Mars has always been about the size it is now. To find on Earth the kind of atmospheric pressure found on Mars, one has to be at 40 MILES altitude. On Mars water ice sublimes to water vapor, without being liquid, and due to Mars' size and density, those conditions have always prevailed.

The only exception would be due to an impact, which could produce enough water vapor to create a temporary atmosphere dense enough for liquid water to flow. That is exactly the kind of thing seen on Mars -- erosion leading from nowhere to nowhere.

A while back the local paper here had an article about Christopher McCay's "second genesis" theory about Mars. Luckily, it closed with this:
A consensus is now growing among planetary specialists, however, that except for brief early periods more than 4 billion years ago when gigantic meteors might have heated the Martian surface and melted subsurface waters, the Red Planet has always been a cold and icy object, according to Philip Christensen of Arizona State University.

37 posted on 09/12/2021 7:34:46 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: 75thOVI; Abathar; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AnalogReigns; AndrewC; aragorn; ...



38 posted on 09/12/2021 9:35:50 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: knarf

It Migrated to the Earth like a C-17 Planeload of non English Speaking Afghan Translator’s.


39 posted on 09/12/2021 9:40:23 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Trump - Make America Great Again / Xiden - Make America Grovel Again...)
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Mars keyword, sorted newest to oldest, by forum (news, chat, bloggers, backroom):

40 posted on 09/12/2021 10:33:10 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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