Cave entrances on Mars!

The football-field sized holes were observed by Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and have been dubbed the seven sisters --Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki and Jeanne--after loved ones of the researchers who found them. The potential caves were spotted near a massive Martian volcano, Arisa Mons. Their openings range from about 330 to 820 feet (100 to 250 meters) wide, and one of them, Dena, is thought to extend nearly 430 feet (130 meters) beneath the planet's surface.

news.yahoo.com...


Who wants to go spelunking on Mars?

This could weild a lot of clues about our red neighbor.

`````````````````
Fixed title spelling



[edit on 3/4/07 by masqua]

Interesting. oo and i'm in to go spelonking

Count me in too!

I am very interested to see what evidence of past or present life will come to light.


...and then see what happens to cover it up

What a story. . . This could prove to be an incredible find. If there's water down there, which most cave's possess, then there may still be life there also!

Originally posted by 2PacSade
What a story. . . This could prove to be an incredible find. If there's water down there, which most cave's possess, then there may still be life there also!

I agree with you. Caves do contain different sorts of life here on Earth and basicaly stay at a steady temperature as well. These caves could hold a lot of secrets or information for us to discover.

The big question in my mind is how do we get into the cave for samples? If a rover were there, we'd lose the signal when it entered. Didn't President Bush call for a manned expedition to Mars about 3 years ago? Now would be a good time to turn that project into high gear. Also, I'm surprised that one of our ATS planet researchers didn't find the caves first. In the immediate term (until we get someone up there on Mars to enter the caves), the photos we've seen here on ATS already will probably yield better evidence of present/past life on the Red Planet.

for explorations of caves you have to get both the current rovers together in one spot for a cave entrance so one of the two can be used as a relay because going in to the cave we might have a high possiblity of loosing signal with the rover so using the second rover as a the signal relay.

only problem is that there is a great distance between the two rovers. so this solution is a problem.

[edit on 3-4-2007 by MarkLuitzen]

There has always been life elsewhere in the galaxy, and caves are no surprise to me.

These caves could also be used for some sort of protection or living quarters for manned trips to mars. Given that they are deep enough to travel through.

Originally posted by carewemust
The big question in my mind is how do we get into the cave for samples? If a rover were there, we'd lose the signal when it entered. Didn't President Bush call for a manned expedition to Mars about 3 years ago? Now would be a good time to turn that project into high gear. Also, I'm surprised that one of our ATS planet researchers didn't find the caves first. In the immediate term (until we get someone up there on Mars to enter the caves), the photos we've seen here on ATS already will probably yield better evidence of present/past life on the Red Planet.

Most of the data rovers take they take when out of contact with the ground. They store it in flash memory and play it back later.

That's the easy problem. The hard problem is navigation and hazard avoidance in a cave.

[edit on 3-4-2007 by disownedsky]

Originally posted by JackCash
protection or living quarters for manned trips to mars.

Very true. I'm pretty sure the most significant threat to humans on Mars is radiation from space. Something about its thin atmosphere being unable to shield radiation effectively. A sufficiently deep cavern may mitigate those risks.

And I don't understand any surprise about caves being present on Mars. Certainly the size of these are tremendous, but I would be more surprised if we found no caves there.