call heaven.
Is your rover running?
Well you better go catch it.
hehehehehehehehehehehheheheheheheh
--
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Overseas Security Advisory Council
U.S. Department of State
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-----Original Message-----
From: Dharmesh Goel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 2:34 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: NASA's 2PM Conference...
Exciting....
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/mar/HQ_04100_mars_water.html
Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/354-5011)
March 23, 2004
RELEASE : 04-100
Standing Body Of Water Left Its Mark In Mars Rocks
NASA's Opportunity rover has demonstrated some rocks on Mars probably formed
as deposits at the bottom of a body of gently flowing saltwater.
"We think Opportunity is parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty
sea on Mars," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,
principal investigator for the science payload on Opportunity and its twin
Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit.
Clues gathered so far do not tell how long or how long ago liquid water
covered the area. To gather more evidence, the rover's controllers plan to
send Opportunity out across a plain toward a thicker exposure of rocks in
the wall of a crater.
NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science Dr. Ed Weiler said, "This
dramatic confirmation of standing water in Mars' history builds on a
progression of discoveries about that most Earthlike of alien planets. This
result gives us impetus to expand our ambitious program of exploring Mars to
learn whether microbes have ever lived there and, ultimately, whether we
can."
"Bedding patterns in some finely layered rocks indicate the sand-sized
grains of sediment that eventually bonded together were shaped into ripples
by water at least five centimeters (two inches) deep, possibly much deeper,
and flowing at a speed of 10 to 50 centimeters (four to 20 inches) per
second," said Dr. John Grotzinger, rover science-team member from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
In telltale patterns, called crossbedding and festooning, some layers within
a rock lie at angles to the main layers. Festooned layers have smile-shaped
curves produced by shifting of the loose sediments' rippled shapes under a
current of water.
"Ripples that formed in wind look different than ripples formed in water,"
Grotzinger said. "Some patterns seen in the outcrop that Opportunity has
been examining might have resulted from wind, but others are reliable
evidence of water flow," he said.
According to Grotzinger, the environment at the time the rocks were forming
could have been a salt flat, or playa, sometimes covered by shallow water
and sometimes dry. Such environments on Earth, either at the edge of oceans
or in desert basins, can have currents of water that produce the type of
ripples seen in the Mars rocks.
A second line of evidence, findings of chlorine and bromine in the rocks,
also suggests this type of environment. Rover scientists presented some of
that news three weeks ago as evidence the rocks had at least soaked in
mineral-rich water, possibly underground water, after they formed. Increased
assurance of the bromine findings strengthens the case rock-forming
particles precipitated from surface water as salt concentrations climbed
past saturation while water was evaporating.
Dr. James Garvin, lead scientist for Mars and lunar exploration at NASA
Headquarters, Washington, said, "Many features on the surface of Mars that
orbiting spacecraft have revealed to us in the past three decades look like
signs of liquid water, but we have never before had this definitive class of
evidence from the martian rocks themselves. We planned the Mars Exploration
Rover Project to look for evidence like this, and it is succeeding better
than we had any right to hope. Someday we must collect these rocks and bring
them back to terrestrial laboratories to read their records for clues to the
biological potential of Mars."
Squyres said, "The particular type of rock Opportunity is finding, with
evaporite sediments from standing water, offers excellent capability for
preserving evidence of any biochemical or biological material that may have
been in the water."
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.,
expect Opportunity and Spirit to operate several months longer than the
initial rover's three-month prime missions on Mars. To analyze hints of
crossbedding, mission controllers programmed Opportunity to move its robotic
arm more than 200 times in one day, taking 152 microscope pictures of
layering in a rock called "Last Chance."
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington. For images and information about the project on the
Internet, visit:
Dharmesh
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Skinner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 2:29 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: NASA's 2PM Conference...
Yup, going on right now, caught about 5 min just now. Announcing very
strong evidence of flowing water. Cool Stuff you your into this kind of
thing.
--------------
Ian Skinner
Web Programmer
BloodSource
www.BloodSource.org
Sacramento, CA
"C code. C code run. Run code run. Please!"
- Cynthia Dunning
_____
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