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NIMA Locates The Mars Polar Lander
Skyshadow writes "Space.com is reporting that the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) believes they've located the Mars Polar Lander, intact on it's landing legs. They've apparently had their people looking for the lander in photos taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, which has been tasked to take more photos of the landing area later this year."
at least we know Xenu didn't get it.
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It's one thing to have an image; it's another to interpret the results. Two scientific teams working from different points of view could come up with incompletely consistent conclusions from the same data.
We do know that Mars had water, and probably still has some; we just don't know how much, we don't know how recently, and we don't know how important it was in shaping the Martian surface. If it's not on the surface, or in the atmosphere, has it bled away to space, or is a large amount still encased in the ground? The results from the Global Surveyor cameras have only just begun to be analyzed in a rigorous fashion, and the scientific results you look for will be forthcoming over the next several years. Just don't expect pat answers.
Anyway, uh, canals? There ARE no canals on Mars, kiddo. Maybe you should get your astronomy books more recent than 100 years old.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Goonie wrote:
Even if you had centimetre-resolution images of Mars, that's not necessarily going to tell you whether canals were formed by water. Why? Because it only shows what's there. It doesn't necessarily show you how it got to be that way.
Yep. Actually, the bigger problem is that on Earth, we can observe features over time to determine how they are changing. There are geologic processes on Mars, but they will move glacially by comparison. We can't observe the Valles Marineris canyon system over time and see processes like erosion and sublimation, because they aren't happening -- or if they are, it's on a scale of tenths of a percent as fast as on Earth. So even observation over time is largely denied us as a tool.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I wish I could take credit for this but it was posted by an AC way back.... it may be closer to the truth than anyone could have guessed:
/\/\y 31337 h4x0r1n6 5K1LLZ!
"150 years from now when men find the crashed probe on mars, the LCD display will probably read: PH33R
- K1n6 Kr4x0r! 1999"