Mars Water Surprise in Curiosity Rover Soil Samples

0bserver1
And they tell us NOW?...for how long are they on the Martian surface? Like a decade ?

But it is great for future manned missions . It makes it easier to build outposts for very long periods.
Although I think that you will have a long time to recover when you come back to earth because of its gravity..

edit on 26-9-2013 by 0bserver1 because: (no reason given)

They just found out. So they just told us.

0bserver1
reply to post by winofiend

 

yeah some members here pointed out on photo's taken by Nasa that they saw water.. But they have to sniff and sneeze before they really know what their seeing . I would say one picture says 1000 words?
but hey... whoam I, just a packet on the net!

There are no pictures of water. The water is subsurface, as in, can't be seen.

inquisitive1977
It's pretty much an accepted fact now that Mars was at one point teaming with water. Not only that but they confirmed it was water we could actually drink.

Everywhere on earth where we have that water there is life, why would Earth be much more special than Mars. As we keep learning with extremophile life it can survive anywhere on earth also.

If life did arise on Mars I think it is highly likely it is still there, at least in an extremophile single cell form underground. Discoveries like this of so much moisture in the ground definitely increases those chances.

Awesome find somehow I missed this, really wish we could build some kind of tunneling probe to mars to look for signs of life.

Mars had water billions of years ago. The timeframe for the planet being suitable for life to form is extremely small, so it's very likely there is no life.

NoRulesAllowed
When abundant amounts of water and O2 (!!!) get released from the soil with high heat...

Means a massive meteorite impact would create WATER and O2 when I read this right...
This is VERY interesting.....would a massive meteorite impact transform Mars into a new Earth?

edit on 42013RuThursdayAmerica/Chicago16PMThursdayThursday by NoRulesAllowed because: (no reason given)

Mars has no magnetic shielding, this means it can not hold an atmosphere. You could add water and O2 all day long and it would simply be blown away by solar winds.

Until Mars has shielding like that of Earth's an atmosphere is impossible. This would mean restarting Mar's core ... something far beyond our current ability.

dobbiedabill

spartacus699
reply to post by gortex

 

I bet the truth is more like this. That rover is actually in area 51. The operates might not all know that. One realized there was that water build up. The leaked the story. But the water was either rainfall or condensation building up since the rover is here.

There's an Xprize to get a rover on the moon. Now think about that, we can get a rover to mars but there's no need to send one to the moon? Does that make sense to you? The you-es didn't send one to the moon for fear that it would expose there fake lunar landing.

Now if this whole rover to the moon xprize gets cancelled for some unknown reason don't say I didn't warn you. After such a massive lie, to send anything to the moon now would be very risky. Because they would quickly find out that there's not a trace of any landing area.

why do they not put a robot on the moon i have always wondered that with the amount of probes we send to mars it would be a lot easier and a good bit cheaper to do this by nasa or get elon musk involved

We have sent far more probes to the Moon.
en.wikipedia.org...-present
To suggest otherewise is sheer ignorance.

Arken
reply to post by gortex

 

Step by step. Drop by drop.... NASA will discover actual Lakes, Rivers and Oceans on MARS...

S&f, Gortex.

No. They won't.

The rover always seemed suspicious to me..

did they not think to put a video camera or a microphone on it?

photos are great, we've seen many but i want to see movies and hear the sounds of Mars.

reply to post by Agit8dChop

did they not think to put a video camera or a microphone on it?

I agree the omission of a microphone on Curiosity is a missed opportunity but it can take video although only at about 10 fps,I too am disappointed at the lack of videos being released but I have found this one .

The MastCams can take full-color 360-degree panoramic images by stitching together 150 individual photos taken in a slowly rotating circle. Finally, the cameras can also take 720p high-definition video at a rate of about 10 frames per second.
www.wired.com...

So NASA , isn't it about time we started getting some of those 720p HD videos of the planets surface

gortex
So NASA , isn't it about time we started getting some of those 720p HD videos of the planets surface

And what would such a video show? It would be pretty much a static picture, unless there's a dust devil. Clouds, the changing sun angle, and other natural events are best filmed at low fps and shown as time-lapse.

Same goes for videos from the Moon - there's nothing there that moves.

From scientific and technological perspective, a high-fps HD video is a massive strain on the rover and mission control, and has little scientific value.

But privately, I'd like to see such videos, with sound if its on Mars, of the rover itself driving or using its robotic arm.

From Curiosity, there are several videos of it shaking the scoop with the soil sample, dropping the sample into the instrument inlet, videos of Phobos transit, etc.

reply to post by wildespace

And what would such a video show?

As you mentioned clouds , movement , landscape , Dust Devils .... Mars rats , Mars lizards , Mars ducks

The chemcam laser should be powerful enough to vaporize the water trapped in the "soil", they use that laser to burn holes in the ground and in rocks.

if there really is so much water trapped in the "soil" then shouldn`t we be able to see wet "soil" around the holes that the laser makes? or maybe even little ice crystals if the water vapor condenses quickly?
perhaps the holes are too small to produce any noticeable amounts of water or condensation.

When it comes to laser blasts, the Curiosity rover is no slouching Stormtrooper. These impressive before-and-after shots show a nice row of dots resulting from the probe’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on a target patch of soil on Mars.

ChemCam is Curiosity’s coolest bit of science gear, shooting laser beams that deliver a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second. The rover analyzes the resulting glowing plasma to determine what elements and molecules make up its target. Beechy received 50 laser shots, creating holes ranging from 0.08 to 0.16 inches wide, and demonstrated the rover’s ability to clear dust and small grains from its target area.

www.wired.com...