Posted on 03/02/2004 7:42:33 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Parts of Mars were once "drenched" with so much water that life could easily have existed there, NASA (news - web sites) said on Tuesday.
The robot explorer Opportunity has seen clear evidence of the main goal of Mars exploration -- that water once flowed or pooled on the Red Planet's surface.
"Opportunity has landed in an area of Mars where liquid water once drenched the surface," NASA associate administrator Ed Weiler told a news conference. "Moreover, this area would have been good habitable environment."
That does not mean that evidence of life has been found -- but it suggests that life could have evolved on Mars just as it did on Earth, NASA said.
It does mean NASA can go ahead with a plan to eventually send people to Mars. Finding strong evidence of water has been a prerequisite for more ambitious missions.
Evidence of frozen water has been seen in several places on Mars, and photographs taken from orbiters have shown structures that could have been formed by flowing or gushing water, but the Opportunity's instruments provide the strongest evidence yet of something resembling the way water flows and collects on or just under the surface of the Earth.
Opportunity landed on Jan. 24 in a small crater on the vast flat Meridiani Planum near the planet's equator. It has been studying finely layered bedrock in the crater's wall.
Scientists have been puzzling over whether the layers were formed by wind, volcanic lava flows or water, and if little round balls nicknamed "blueberries" may have been formed by water.
"BLUEBERRIES," HEMATITE AND LAVA FLOWS
They have also been intrigued by the discovery of a gray shiny mineral called hematite, which on Earth is formed in water.
The scientists said the hematite, the blueberries and the heavy salt content of the area all add up to one conclusion -- salt water.
"We have concluded the rocks here were once soaked with liquid water," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who leads the scientific investigation.
"It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry," he added. "We cannot yet tell you with certainty that these rocks were laid down in a lake, in a pool, in a sea."
They may have been formed by water percolating through layers of volcanic ash, he said.
"(This area) would have been suitable for life," Squyres said. "That doesn't mean life was there. But this was a habitable place on Mars at one period of time."
More will be known when a mission can be sent to bring back Mars rocks, Squyres said. "The best way to get at the age is going to be to bring some of this stuff back," he said.
"It is clear that we are going to have to do a sample return," agreed Weiler. He said work will start right away on preparing for an eventual human mission to Mars.
In the meantime, another robotic mission will be set up, probably to pick up some rocks and soil and bring them back to Earth for close analysis.
Pictures from the rover's panoramic camera and microscopic imager show a rock it has been looking at called "El Capitan" is pocked with indentations about a 0.4 inch long.
"This distinctive texture is familiar to geologists as the sites where crystals of salt minerals form within rocks that sit in briny water," NASA said in a statement.
Benton Clark, chief scientist of space exploration at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Astronautics Operations in Denver, said the salty area resembled a dried-up seabed -- and the composition was comparable to the saltiness in the Dead Sea, between Israel and Jordan.
They need more intelligence, and more redundancy.
Each robot needs to be bright enough to be "trusted" not to walk off a cliff or into a rockpile from which it can't walk out, or into a sandpit, and so forth. They need to be tested here -- sufficiently, so that they can be trusted.
Then, they need redundancy. Instead of sending one rocket, with one robot, and everyone crossing their fingers and sweating like a pig in rut for the next year or so until it lands -- or crashes, or goes black -- they should "mirv" the rockets.
Send several rockets, each with several orbiter/lander modules, with each module having several landers.
Each module should have one "special" lander -- a nuclear power station, which will be pre-positioned along the planned research trail. The robots will, with their photocell power and storage batteries, have enough reserve to make it from one "filling station" to the one beyond the next, so that they won't be stranded if one of the stations fails. Redundancy, again.
The power stations will also raise a (relatively) tall mast, for use as LAN relay/repeater/extenders, and, for relaying comms to/from the satellite network.
After the clusters landers have deployed, have the orbiters set up a "GPS"-like system in their Mars orbits.
Then, network the landers via wireless LAN.
Let them "decide" on how to handle "assignments" via their onboard intelligence, tracking their individual positions on the planet, deciding which one(s) will handle which task(s), and then handling uplink/downlink comms via the network, i.e., whichever unit has the best signal path sends the most data, with the others in reserve, handing off as necessary (as towers become blocked by hills, etc.; they will also be capable of direct uplink/downlink with the satellites, in cases where they are blocked from line of sight comms with all local towers.)
The robots would be built for different purposes, with plenty of overlap, so that the failure of any one (or more than one) would not kill that part of the mission.
They could probably economize by launching a single rocket, with more orbiter/lander module "kits" onboard, but this would be a false economy if it fails on launch.
This plan would increase the chances of survival, and, optimize the mission ROI upon arrival.
Spending $450 million to send ONE R/C car is absurd. The additional expense of doing it as I suggest above would be incremental, but the ROI would be multiplied.
Well, that's how I would do it if I was running the show.
But, I'm not running the show. I'm merely financing it.
Socialized space sucks.
There is a place for those who can not just plan the projects but can build the hardware and program it. The beauty of robots is that they can or should be cheap. A person could build one in his garage including all the software. Once there is hardware it should not be impossible to hitch a ride. Net cost to the developer: all the free time he has but not much money.
If I do it right, it'll be a prototype (ideally) as well as a working incubator for keeping our own barnyard clucking. If I don't do it right, I'll never hear the end of it. :)
I've looked at the prices for "dumb" incubators, and I figure I can build a "smart" incubator for a fraction of those prices.
Robotic eggs would be kewl!
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