You are browsing the archive for Water on Mars.
29 September 2008
Phoenix Sees Snow and Carbonates on Mars!
Big news from the Phoenix lander! A new JPL press release just came out, announcing the detection of snow and carbonates on Mars! From the press release: A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft’s landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground. “Nothing like this …
26 September 2008
Plumbing on Mars: HiRISE Reveals Groundwater Cracks
This image from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, shows cracks in the rocks on Mars that once formed the underground plumbing through which groundwater traveled. Groundwater flow on Mars has been speculated for a long time, but it takes powerful cameras like HiRISE to actually find the evidence. These cracks resisted erosion because they were filled with minerals deposited by groundwater, so now we can see them …
24 September 2008
Rain on Mars?
Universe Today is reporting that scientists have found evidence of rainfall and stable surface water on Mars. Unfortunately, the paper is published in a journal that Cornell does not subscribe to, so all I have to go on is the press release and the abstract for the paper. Still, it doesn’t sound to me like there is anything really ground-breaking in this study. They are reporting evidence for fan-shaped delta …
17 September 2008
MSL Workshop Presentations!
For those of you playing along at home, I thought I should point out that most of the presentations so far are posted at the “marsoweb” landing site website, so I encourage you to go check them out. Also, in case you were wondering, I have no idea which sites I want to survive this process. I have one or two that I am skeptical of, but I am really …
Potential MSL Site: Gale Crater
I am sort of breaking my own protocol here by posting about Gale crater before I hear the presentations today, but since we will immediately go into discussion and decision making after it is presented this morning, I figured that it would be good to familiarize you with it now. Gale is a ~100 km diameter crater on Mars with a huge 5 km tall mound of sediments in the …
Potential MSL Site: Mawrth Vallis
The Mawrth Vallis landing site is actually a set of four possible landing ellipses in an area with huge clay mineral signatures that is cut by a meandering outflow channel. There was some grumbling in the past about the fact that Mawrth advocates proposed four ellipses when everyone else followed the rules and only submitted one, but in the end I think it hurt them. They ran way over time …
Potential MSL Site: Eberswalde
The Eberswalde site is interesting because it is unarguably the best example of a delta on Mars. It is in a small crater that was partially obscured by the Holden impact and forms an enclosed basin with clear inflowing channels. (we know the source and the sink!) The hypothesis is that it was a long-lived lake with a large delta. A delta environment is great because it is a location …
Potential MSL Site: Holden Crater
The next landing site that we heard about was Holden Crater. Holden is a 154 km diameter crater formed early in martian history that happened to fall smack in the path of an extensive fluvial system. There was a long chain of craters connected by water-carved channels and then the Holden impact occurred and interrupted that flow. It looks like Uzboi vallis, one of the channels, then breached the rim …
16 September 2008
Potential MSL Site: Nili Fossae Trough
This morning we hit the ground running and heard about a very interesting site: the Nili Fossae Trough. This site would land in a big canyon formed when a block of crust dropped down. To the southeast of the site is the giant Isidis impact basin, and to the south is the Syrtis Major volcano and associated lava flows. Just east of the trough is a somewhat fresher crater whose …
Potential MSL Site: South Meridiani
The south Meridiani landing site is a newcomer to the bunch. It was added earlier this summer as a replacement for the north meridiani site. The south Meridiani site is about 100 km due south of the Opportunity rover landing site and about 100 km due east of the Miyamoto site. What makes the south Meridiani site interesting is that, just south of the landing ellipse, you transition from Meridiani …
