Posted on 08/09/2005 1:18:11 PM PDT by LibWhacker
NASA's twin Mars rovers continue to turn up intriguing new rock formations after a combined total of nearly 1120 Martian days on the planet.
After discovering relatively little, other than basaltic lava flows, during its first six months on the Red Planet, Spirit continues to make up for lost time as it ascends Husband Hill - unearthing clues to violence in the planet's youth.
Meanwhile, Opportunity is also experiencing a reversal of fortune on the other side of Mars. After trudging over desolate stretches of sand for about five months, it has finally reached an island of bedrock that appears unlike anything yet seen in the mission.
Spirit landed in the lava plains of Gusev Crater, getting off to a slow start in its mission. But since it began clambering up to higher ground in the Columbia Hills in July 2004, it has seen granular rocks with a mix of grain sizes. And recently it has seen the most extreme case of this from a spot about 20 metres below the summit of Husband Hill, which rises about 80 metres above the floor of Gusev Crater.
Plum pudding
About a week ago, Spirit paused to study an outcrop called Voltaire. The outcrop is made of large, often angular "pebbles" that appear to have a different composition than the finer-grained material in which they are embedded.
The rovers' chief scientist, Steve Squyres at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US, says the "plum pudding" composition hints at an explosive event such as a volcanic eruption or impact.
That view is strengthened by another rock that Spirit has been scrutinising for the last few days. Called Assemblee, it appears to be made of "cruddy glass" that may have been melted by such an event.
"The diversity of rock types is staggering," Squyres told New Scientist. He believes impacts may be to blame, pointing out that Spirit has previously uncovered rocks with high concentrations of nickel - an element found in many meteorites. The impacts would blast away different layers of the surface and jumble them together as they crashed down again. "You're basically throwing it into a blender," he says.
Early influences
But colleague Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, US, says there may be more to the story. "I think the crust is too complicated to have been produced by one process or one event," he says, adding that volcanic eruptions, impacts, wind and water all may have played a role. "These granular rocks were broken up, transported, put in place and cemented."
He says the Columbia Hills are even older than the approximately 3 billion-year-old volcanic plains that make up Gusev's floor and therefore contain clues about the events that shaped early Mars.
As Spirit continues towards the summit of Husband Hill and then proceeds down its southern slope, team members will compare the rocks to others they have studied. "If we see an even greater variety of rocks than we’ve observed so far, it will argue against one or two big events," Arvidson says.
Out to sea
On the other side of the planet, Opportunity is beginning to do some serious science of its own after a long stint of somewhat fruitless roaming. "Opportunity was the glamour rover for the first six months of the mission, but for the last five months, it has been trudging across a bleak plain of sand," says Squyres. "We felt like sailors who have been out to sea for months."
But within the last couple of days, the rover finally reached a little spot of bedrock - one of several scattered around the area. And it may prove worth the wait.
The rover used its rock abrasion tool to scrape the rock and found "blueberries” - broadly similar to those found in other places on Mars - that appear to have formed in the presence of water. But these have different size distributions and are not as spherical as those seen previously, suggesting the composition of the rock is different, says Squyres.
After studying this outcrop further, the team may send Opportunity farther south on Wednesday, towards an old, shallow crater called Erebus.
On Wednesday, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is also set to blast off to Mars. It will begin its work in November 2006, scanning the surface from a relatively low altitude of about 305 kilometres.
http://www.freewebs.com/deepspace101/jpl2004.htm
http://www.freewebs.com/deepspace101/jpl2004partii.htm
Its obviously just my opinion, but the new century will belong to the country that masters space technology. It can be us, or it can be someone else. Whoever it is, they will call the tune and our grandkids will be working for them.
If the suggestion is that NASA is an inadequate medium for carrying out this work, and private parties could do it better, then I would be sympathetic to that argument. But until someone figures out a way to make deep space commercial, so that private companies are drawn into it, I don't mind seeing a NASA chip away at it.
I didn't know you were a Democrat!
Yep, about a billion dollars worth of pictures of rocks and sand. I have a few that I can let go for a measly $10,000 each.
More likely the wife's caboose. See steatopygia
Wasn't it actually called Beagle, or some other dog name?
I prefer Tom Clancy's vision in his book, DEBT OF HONOR.
Now that would really save you money.
Well, the one that blew up on entry sure got some play. And to be fair, these little guys got plenty when they first got there, like when the one was in big trouble and they got it out. It's that same old story, if it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead.
I thought the "pay dirt" at the top of this thread was misleading. If it doesn't strike water or little green guys I wouldn't call it "pay dirt".
Really?!
I grew up in the 1960s when the space program was the hot item.
I waited 12 hours in Titusville, FL across the river from Cape Kennedy in 1972 to watch and film the Apollo 17 liftoff.
The best circus I ever saw.
Where has it got us?
Yes, the British probe was Beagle; it was a straight lander, had no movement capability once on Mars. As space probes go based on the small number of people that built it, its small sizeand the tiny budget, it basically almost was an amateur project. I was disappointed by the gloating over its failure; it really wasn't comparable in any way to the Mars Rovers.
Exactly.
We were put here to kill, starve, torture and anhililate ourselves......
and that job we're very good at.
look at the computer you're typing on.
Kind of short-sighted.
The countries left standing in 2100 will be the ones which were willing to be as ruthless as necessary to exterminate the opposing ideologies.
The instinct of survival trumps curiosity.
It's a crying shame we spend all of this money employing American people isn't it?
http://www.freewebs.com/deepspace101/jpl2004.htm http://www.freewebs.com/deepspace101/jpl2004partii.htm
In the last 33 years, exactly nowhere! We have actually gone backwards in our manned program
Don't forget the Japanese craft. It was DOA. Solar flare fried it enroute, iirc.
Really? Guess those astronauts floating around in the space station are a waste of time. How about the Hubble telescope?
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