Posted on 11/21/2012 3:19:55 AM PST by djf
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.
The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.
SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently.
"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."
The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.
The car-size robot carries 10 different instruments to aid in its quest, but SAM is the rover's heart, taking up more than half of its science payload by weight.
In addition to analyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of Red Planet air. Many scientists are keen to see if Curiosity detects any methane, which is produced by many lifeforms here on Earth. A SAM analysis of Curiosity's first few sniffs found no definitive trace of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, but the rover will keep looking.
Curiosity began driving again Friday (Nov. 16) after spending six weeks testing its soil-scooping gear at a site called "Rocknest." The rover will soon try out its rock-boring drill for the first time on the Red Planet, scientists have said.
I have found that if I refrain from eating for a week or two I feel significantly lighter.
Google “Beyond Einsteins Unified Field” John Brandenburg, PhD.
There’s some math that would be daunting if not impossible to the untrained eye, but I was a math/comp sci major in college, and have read tons of physics.
The economy is so bad that God has been “outsourcing”? Life found on Mars...
They found Sheila Jackson Lee’s flag?
Close on the opener.
There’s an asian woman who reports NASA stuff for NHK or some other Japanese station. Supposedly they found a a metallic CocaCola bottle cap (the ones that require a bottle opener). Today most of them are screw off caps except for Mexican coke that still uses glass bottles and caps that also need openers
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Fred you will love this. NASA was supposed to have found a vintage Coke bottle top on Mars. ( Someone or something popped an old fashioned coke and had a cool one on Mars?LOL)
Man has been there
Man was thirsty
Man was litterbug even then
I can design a suit to have any traits that you want. It looks like a rather silly costume, as the fur doesn’t even lay right as can be seen by the way light shines on it.
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