Mars Had Enough Water for Life, NASA Says

Yahoo! News ^ | 3/2/04 | Maggie Fox - Reuters

[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.

[NormsRevenge]

An image shown by NASA (news - web sites) officials in Washington on March 2, 2004, shows a detail of the planet Mars that they claim shows evidence parts of the planet were once covered in water. Parts of Mars were once 'drenched with water,' so much that life could easily have existed there, NASA 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. Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters

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NASA (news - web sites) scientists said Tuesday after reviewing data from the Mars rover Opportunity, although they said the finding doesn't prove that life existed. (AP /NASA/JPL)

[NormsRevenge]

Let's Go to 'Last Chance'

Update: Spirit and Opportunity

SPIRIT UPDATE: Grinding, Take Two - sol 58, Mar 02, 2004

On sol 58, which ends at 7:52 p.m., PST on March 2, the planned four-hour rock abrasion tool grind of "Humphrey" was limited to only 20 minutes. The intricate slopes and cracks of the rock make it a challenging target for instruments. When sensors indicated a loss of contact with surface material, the software perceived a problem and the rock abrasion tool was moved away from the rock. Engineers are amending the software limits to duplicate the rock abrasion tool's earlier operation on the rock "Adirondack," giving a higher likelihood of successful completion on the next sol.

The morning began with the completion of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integration on the previously brushed area. The panoramic camera then took a multi-spectral observation of the nearby ground, followed by a Mössbauer spectrometer integration on the same area.

Spirit's Sol 58 wake-up song was "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2 to pay homage to its twin rover's amazing findings of water evidence at Meridiani Planum.

On sol 59, Spirit will attempt another rock abrasion tool grind on "Humphrey," followed by detailed observations of the hole.

Spirit Update Archive

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OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Let's Go to 'Last Chance' - sol 37, Mar 02, 2004

On sol 37, Opportunity woke up at 9:35 Local Solar Time to "Let's Go" by the Cars. Opportunity completed the miniature thermal emission spectrometer and panoramic camera surveys of the rock abrasion tool holes at "Guadalupe" and "McKittrick," then drove 4.25 meters (14 feet) to "Last Chance," ending the sol at 7:33 a.m. PST on Tuesday, March 2.

With the moves of a tango dancer, the drive was another intricate study in, and challenge of, driving on a slippery, steep slope.

The rover was directed to: turn right, go forward, turn right, take images of "Last Chance," turn right, go forward, turn left, go forward, turn right, take images of "Big Bend," go straight, turn left and go straight! Due to the challenges of driving and pirouetting on such a steep slope (as steep as 22 degrees) the rover found it difficult to maintain a perfectly straight course, and Opportunity came up shy and right of the "Last Chance" target by about 30 centimeters (about one foot).

The plan for sol 38, which will end at 8:13 a.m. PST on Wednesday, March 3 is to do a short drive again to get within arm's reach of "Last Chance." Once in place, Opportunity will use the science instruments on the end of the robotic arm to analyze "Last Chance."

Opportunity Update Archive

[Phil V.]

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If you'd like to be on or off this MARS ping list please FRail me

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[NormsRevenge]

Last Chance

[USMMA_83]

This is absolutely amazing! Bigger than Niel's walk on the moon...

[NormsRevenge]

FRom the Opportunity press release page

Ripples in Rocks Point to Water

This image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera shows the rock nicknamed "Last Chance," which lies within the outcrop near the rover's landing site at Meridiani Planum, Mars. The image provides evidence for a geologic feature known as ripple cross-stratification. At the base of the rock, layers can be seen dipping downward to the right. The bedding that contains these dipping layers is only one to two centimeters (.4 to .8 inches) thick. In the upper right corner of the rock, layers also dip to the right, but exhibit a weak "concave-up" geometry. These two features -- the thin, cross-stratified bedding combined with the possible concave geometry -- suggest small ripples with sinuous crest lines. Although wind can produce ripples, they rarely have sinuous crest lines and never form steep, dipping layers at this small scale. The most probable explanation for these ripples is that they were formed in the presence of moving water.

Image credit for above shot : NASA/JPL/Cornell

Large (156 kB)

[Cold Heat]

Well, I'm exhausted after the exciting news of water on Mars![sarc]

I really wish they had been a bit more forthcoming, but perhaps I missed something.

I will try to catch a replay.

On to other matters, have you found anything else interesting?

[Poundstone]

Bigger than Neil Armstrong's moon walk? Er, I don't think so. At all.

[blam]

I'm reminded of Sir Fred Hoyle's 1975 book, The Intellegent Universe.

[writer33]

Where there's water, there's oil. And that means that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Halliburton have drilled for oil there. Hence the end of life on Mars. All because of Halliburton and BIG OIL! :) HA!

[NormsRevenge]

Meridiani Plains

This is a portion of a previously released image (PIA02397) taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera onboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, showing the dark, relatively smooth plains of Meridiani Planum, where the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed. The larger circular features in the upper three-quarters of the image are thought to be the locations of buried craters formed by meteorite impacts. The cluster of smaller circular features in the bottom quarter of the scene represent a field of craters formed either by simultaneous impact of many meteorites, or impact of material thrown from a much, much larger nearby crater as it formed. The dark material covering these plains includes an abundance of the iron oxide mineral, hematite, that was detected by the Mars Global Surveyor thermal emission spectrometer. The scene is located near 2.2 degrees south, 3.7 degrees west and was acquired on August 19, 1999.

[writer33]

Like Rush said, "The reason for finding no life on Mars was due to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Halliburton using all the water up, drilling for oil. HA!

[LibWhacker]

This is excellent, excellent news for any future manned mission, as it implies abundant water MAY lie just below the surface (further study, of course, is necessary).

Without a native supply of water, manned missions will be a lot more difficult, and this is the significance of today's announcement, imo. Knowing whether life has ever existed there would be great, but right now the most important thing is to know whether our astronauts can survive there without carrying along and recycling their own wastewater.

[Phil V.]

Exhausted? . . . take a break and enjoy the view of . . . ........................... uh . . . .ROCKS . . .

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[NormsRevenge]

FRom the Spirit side .. Humphrey gets scrubbed..

A Clean Sweep

This image from Spirit's navigation camera atop its mast reveals another interplanetary "first" for the rock abrasion tool. The three dark circular areas on the rock "Humphrey" make up a rock abrasion tool mosaic, created by the tool's stainless steel brushes in about 15 minutes on Spirit's 56th sol on Mars. Even though a triple brushing was never conducted in a testbed, the rock abrasion tool's previous performance on the rock "Adirondack" convinced the science and engineering teams that it was fully capable of such an operation. The optimal situation for the miniature thermal emission spectrometer to analyze the difference between the rock's composition with dust and then without (after brushing) requires an area about three times that of one rock abrasion tool circumference. Scientists want to determine if the spectrometer is "reading" the dust or the harder coating underneath it. This mosaic provided the area that the spectrometer needed to conduct its assessment. The rock abrasion tool's two upper brushed imprints trail off and aren't completely round due to "Humphrey's" intricate slopes, which make it difficult to find a completely flat surface on which to place instruments.

[Cold Heat]

I just gotta get me some 3-d glasses.

Socks sent out a link, I will order a pair for this and whatever else comes along.

[Cold Heat]

excellent news for any future manned mission,

Agreed, otherwise they would have had to land near the poles.

If they can come up with an extraction technique for the brine stuff, they can make hydrazine or whatever.

[Cold Heat]

I think when all is said, most in the program will welcome Bush's vision for the future.

The "Big Race" starts tomorrow!

[Joe Hadenuf]

Bigger than Neil Armstrong's moon walk? Er, I don't think so. At all.

If the water they believe was/is present on Mars, and if life evolved from that water and they eventually find evidence of it, then yes, Armstrong's walk on the moon will pale in comparison.

[Phil V.]

Th' cat actually helped somebody??~!~

Be carefull of cats bearing gifts.

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