Rover Success on Mars!

Phobos

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...ngs/index.html

[:))] [:))]

p.s. Thanks to Evo for the heads-up on this.

Njorl

It will be interesting to see speculation about what happened to the water. Underground lakes? Absorbed into rocks? Evaporated, hydrolyzed and lost to space?

Njorl

LURCH

I watched the webcast, they said they've also found sulfates that could be examined by a later mission to finding fairly definite proof of past life.

Zero

Woohoo!![:D]

Lord Flasheart

Perhaps the environment became unstable due to catastraphic activities, (E.G. volcanoes, asteriod bombardment, Texan-equivalant of Mars elected to presidential office, et cetera.) and the iron core melded with the water. Maybe Valles Marineris might have been a bridge between the core and the oceanic crust. A crust-core link would cool down the planet, leave carbon-based gas emissions, and cause iron oxide to form throughout the planet's soil.

I suppose this will encourage both robotic and crewed missions to our mysterious neighbour.

Nereid

The most likely is permafrost, which is at, or close to, the surface pole-ward of ~60^o to ~80^o, and is increasingly deep at lower latitudes. How deep is the permafrost? The top ~200m is dry ('ice free'), with permafront at ~450m at equatorial latitudes. How do we know this? Rampart craters - their distribution by depth and latitude [Hartmann*, p100].

A lot of water was lost to space, and some is certainly hydrolysed.


*William K. Hartmann "A Traveler's Guide to Mars"

[Edit: checked Hartmann re permafrost, edited appropriately]

Ivan Seeking

Please update your estimates for Drake's variables. [6)]

Nereid

Anyone read Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee's "Rare Earth"?

Very interesting, especially as a discussion starter.

Oh, and it takes a somewhat different look at the Drake equation ...