Is Rover mission redundant?

A few days ago I listened to an NPR news broadcast that stated the
reason for the Mars Rover mission is to search for water. Why?

Is not water an established discovery on Mars via data from the
current Mars Orbiter? Is the Rover mission just to confirm this
discovery?

eof

"Rob Mohr" wrote:
A few days ago I listened to an NPR news broadcast that stated the
reason for the Mars Rover mission is to search for water. Why?

Is not water an established discovery on Mars via data from the
current Mars Orbiter? Is the Rover mission just to confirm this
discovery?

It's not really accurate to say the rovers are "searching
for water". We've known there's been water on Mars for
quite some time. What they are looking for is rather the
details of Mars' history, and that includes especially the
history of Martian water. How much there was, what form
it was in when, and for how long, and how often, etc.
Marvin and Daffy are geologists, and one of the key things
they are looking to find out is telltale signature in rocks
and whatnot of the presence of water in various forms
throughout Mars' history. Pathfinder, for example, gave
some tantalizing evidence that Mars may contain aggregate
rocks, formed from pebbles joined together in a matrix
through a process that requires water. That sort of thing,
among much else, would be excellent evidence that Mars did
not just have a lot of H2O, nor just that it had a lot of
liquid water for brief periods, but that it had *liquid*
water for considerable durations (obviously, geological
timeperiod durations). And that sort of information goes
straight to the question of the possibility of life on Mars.
Because a Mars with long-lasting oceans and lakes is, so
far as we understand currently, a Mars with a much higher
chance of having supported life.

On 8 Jul 2003 12:38:16 -0700, (Rob Mohr) wrote:

Is not water an established discovery on Mars via data from the
current Mars Orbiter? Is the Rover mission just to confirm this
discovery?

....The hydrogen detected could be from a totally unknown source, and
not just from trapped subsurface ice. The only way to prove there's
water down there is to *go* there and dig for it.

Which is why I wish Buddy Ebsen had been an Astronaut, and we'd sent
him to Mars with a dog and a huntin' rifle...


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Christopher M. Jones wrote:

Except for right at the polar caps those subsurface deposits
are a few meters down. It would require some moderately
substantial drilling to get to them.

Bear in mind that the detection depth of the two neutron detector
systems in Odyssey's GRS suite is ~1 m. The greatest %/wt of the
"permafrost" detected to date is within this range, excluding of course
the hypothesized hydrous minerals that are believed to be the source of
the signal at near-equatorial latitudes. At any rate, while it is
probable that a much greater volume of ice lies below the 1 m level,
viz., the subsurface "iceberg," it would not really require "moderately
substantial drilling" to access the uppermost portion.

--


Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii

Who cares if there is water. The future is already written.

Revelations talks about the "End" and mankind will still be mostly on the
Earth(if not entirely).

Littlemac558 wrote:

Who cares if there is water.

We do. Both for tis own sake, and what it implies for life there.
(Native Martian life, and eventually, ourselves.)

The future is already written.

Free will (presumably God-given) and fate would seem mutually
exclusive. But I don't intend to do a philosophical debate here.

Revelations talks about the "End" and mankind will still be mostly on the
Earth(if not entirely).

Um, note that the 'sci' in the name of this newsgroup is short for
'science.' Can your claim be falsified in any way? If not, this would
not seem to be the place for it. Plenty of religous newsgroups out
there....

(Littlemac558) wrote:
Who cares if there is water. The future is already written.

A lot of the "already written future" has already occurred quite
differently than what is written.

Revelations talks about the "End" and mankind will still be mostly on the
Earth(if not entirely).

Why should I accept that story, rather than "Blue Earth", for example?