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Water on the moon or Mars
I was just wondering about this. I remember checking the daily updates
with my office mates about the two rovers on Mars. We were really disappointed by the amount or quailty of information that was coming out of NASA from the rovers. We heard all about minerals that might have been formed in a water solution way back when and this chemical compound and that. With all of the scientific equipment on the rovers has NASA said we have found a h20 molecule. It seems that hydrogen is going to be very important for moon and mars exploration and i would think that we would want hard evidence before we send a colony or longer mission. Thoughts?? |
#2
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Water on the moon or Mars
Seth wrote:
I was just wondering about this. I remember checking the daily updates with my office mates about the two rovers on Mars. We were really disappointed by the amount or quailty of information that was coming out of NASA from the rovers. Look to the orbiters rather than the rovers. The ESA's Mars Express orbiter has a radar specifically built for searching for water, and it's found quite a bit. Mike Miller |
#3
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Water on the moon or Mars
Seth wrote:
With all of the scientific equipment on the rovers has NASA said we have found a h20 molecule. The MER science payload was not designed to look for water directly, since none was expected near the equator due to the surface temperature and low atmospheric pressure. The point of the mission was to look for geologic evidence of a distant past in which liquid water played a role. Which in fact it found. Nevertheless, the team has seen indirect evidence of hydrated minerals at the Opportunity landing site. Oh, and the rovers have snapped pictures of water ice clouds, if you count that. It seems that hydrogen is going to be very important for moon and mars exploration and i would think that we would want hard evidence before we send a colony or longer mission. I wouldn't worry much about colonies or "longer missions" anytime soon. In any case, aside from the obvious water ice caps, the Mars Odyssey orbiter has found rather dramatic amounts of hydrogen in large expanses of the surface of Mars at high latitudes, which pretty much has to be bound in water ice. In some places, the ground may be on the order of 50% water ice. In 2008, the Phoenix lander will touch down at those high latitudes in the North to sample the water ice directly and whatever is there with it. mark |
#4
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Water on the moon or Mars
In article .com,
"Seth" wrote: I was just wondering about this. I remember checking the daily updates with my office mates about the two rovers on Mars. We were really disappointed by the amount or quailty of information that was coming out of NASA from the rovers. We heard all about minerals that might have been formed in a water solution way back when and this chemical compound and that. With all of the scientific equipment on the rovers has NASA said we have found a h20 molecule. It seems that hydrogen is going to be very important for moon and mars exploration and i would think that we would want hard evidence before we send a colony or longer mission. Thoughts?? Water is less important than money; if you do the calculations a manned Mars mission is way more costly than the US can afford. It's all talk, sending a small team to mars and getting them back alive would bust the treasury. -- Free men own guns, slaves don't www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/ |
#5
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Water on the moon or Mars
Unfortunately with an unexplainable frequency the Mars Express orbiter
also has been noticing a migration of the ice caps in the past three seasons. It is slowly getting smaller and smaller and it never quite comes back out as far as the season before. The reason of course is disappation of the water caps. No one can quite explain the phenomenon and scientist don't think it will disappear altogether but rather it seems to be a trend followed quite frequently on our red neighbor. |
#6
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Quote:
Actually, that was Mars Global Surveyor, specifically the Mars Orbiter Camera's observations. Mars Express hasn't been in orbit long enough to make this observation. -Tim. |
#7
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Water on the moon or Mars
Once upon a time tjj1469 sat by the fire and begun to tell a story:
Unfortunately with an unexplainable frequency the Mars Express orbiter also has been noticing a migration of the ice caps in the past three seasons. It is slowly getting smaller and smaller and it never quite comes back out as far as the season before. The reason of course is disappation of the water caps. No one can quite explain the phenomenon and scientist don't think it will disappear altogether but rather it seems to be a trend followed quite frequently on our red neighbor. Firstly, I am not saying this is not a real phenomena. It certainly is, since it is seen in direct observations. But I should nevertheless point out that this is only a few years worth of observations. Think about snow cover on Earth - during any ten years of terrestrial seasons, sometimes the winter is cold, and snow extends farther south, and sometimes there are warm winters when the snow doesn't even get as far as "normally". The same thing happens on Mars. That's nature. And looking at seasonal changes for three years will not give you statistically accurate anything. Never. 50, 100 or preferrably 1000 years might do it. Secondly, Mars has much more radical periodical changes in its climate than Earth. And now we are talking about longer term changes, in the order of thousands to millions of years. Its obliquity and eccentricity change radically, and hence the solar insolation changes. So it is to be expected that the Martian environment changes accordingly. In the long run. Even on Earth, we actually have no idea of the long-term frequency of e.g. polar cap sizes and other features of climate change. We have been observing nature accurately and in a large scale directly for about 100 years. What we get from ice cores or other indirect measurements don't tell us the whole story, just the after-effects.. and even they are just a blink of an eye considering the variations which take place during the millions of years of _recent_ developments of the planets' history. So looking at MGS images for three (Martian) years just tells you what is expected if common sense and deduction is used: Martian environment varies from year to year. Spectacular, maybe, but certainly nothing special. Jarmo -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni * Planetology group, Astronomy o o Dept. of Physical Sciences |_/ Martian P.O. Box 3000 *,* Owls FI-90014 University of Oulu [`-´] Finland ----"-"--,,-,,-- [ ^ ] office: TÄ215 (corridor L2, 2nd floor) o--*_*--o home: Purjehtijantie 8 A 4, 90560 Oulu contact: phone: +358 (8) 553 1942 / GSM: +358 (45) 6362264 email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi ICQ: 12179355 / Yahoo: tukkijaetkae / Skype: jarmokorteniemi -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Tuumasta toimeen on yhtä pitkä matka kuin täältä iäisyyteen. - Oululehti 9.2.05 |
#8
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Water on the moon or Mars
Thank you for the correction. It is absolutely important to make sure
all information is current and accurate. |
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