anth
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# Posted: 12 Feb 2006 16:08
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A Warm, Wet Mars!
I've not read anything about the latest findings by the Spirit Mars Rover. But, i do regularly check out the raw images beamed back to Earth at the official web site.
Spirit has reached a rock out crop known to mission controllers as "Home Plate" or "Burns Cliff". This area looks very familiar. It is very simular in many ways to "Eagle Crater" the landing site of the twin Mars rover Opportunity.
Eagle crater is famous for the evidence it held of a Martian seabed. With sedimentry layered rocks and mineral deposits left by deep water. It is widely held that Opportunity is indeed roving on an ancient sea floor, a lucky landing spot indeed.
The Spirit rover has often been regarded a poor relation to Opportunity due to it landing in a barren, rocky, and dusty region of mars, showing no signs of large bodies of water ever having existed on the floor of its "Gusev Crater" landing zone.
Spirit has picked up some traces of minerals left behind by water, but not much until now.
As i say, i've not read anything on this, i'm just speculating that this rock pile has sediments in it. They can clearly be seen below in this image i just this moment saved in photoshop! *L*
This image has many common features to this image below captured by the Opportunity Rover.
To find a site with overwhelming evidence of water on one side of the planet, and then to find it on the the other makes a very strong case for Mars having a warm wet past suitable for life to exist.
This coupled with evidence from the Mars Express space probe in orbit which has revealed that Mars still has water on its surface in the form of ice, and maybe even as liquid at times also means a manned mission is far more likely.
Besides the obvious use for water, it can be easily broken up into its Hydrodgen and Oxygen parts by simply running an electrical currant through it. This means we can drink, breath, and even make rocket fuel to get home! With weight equalling $$$$ on a Mars mission anything we don't have to take is a huge bonus.
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