Lots of Ice On Mars

Total Recall writes: "The Mars Odyssey spacecraft is finding large amounts of hydrogen in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This strongly indicates the presence of water ice (since H2O is both common and very stable). The data samples about the upper meter or so of the Martian surface. This apparently extends from the south polar cap up to about 60 south latitude. It suggests a permafrost of mixed ice and dirt."

Comments

Mars as a refueling station ?

[Taco Cowboy]

The availability of ICE may be nice, but what is really needed is H3.

With current technology, it will take at least 2 years of space flight to go from Earth to Mars, and 2 more years for the flight back. The thing is, if you have to carry all the fuel for the to-and-flo flights, the spacecraft will be too heavy to be of any other use.

If there's H3 on Mars, however, the spacecraft only has to carry enough fuel to go TO Mars, and then get refuel there to come home.

One more thought - if there's plenty of ice leftover, then Mars could be used as a "refueling station" for space flight further away than Mars.

Just a thought.

Re:Mars as a refueling station ?

[Soft]

If there's H3 on Mars, however, the spacecraft only has to carry enough fuel to go TO Mars, and then get refuel there to come home.

It is unlikely that you can find tritium (H3) anywhere, it decays in a few years or decades. Perhaps you mean helium-3, and suppose that we have a He3-powered fusion-drive spaceship?

Anyway, we already have chemical rockets, for which water can be quite interesting (hydrogen-oxygen).

One more thought - if there's plenty of ice leftover, then Mars could be used as a "refueling station" for space flight further away than Mars.

Perhaps. But Mars isn't that small a planet, so mining near-Earth asteroids would probably be cheaper.

Re:Mars as a refueling station ?

[ivanthered]

Oxygen is a actually a rather good propellant too, _if_ you use nuclear propulsion, which is the only sensible propulsion system for human spaceflight anyway.
The NERVA rocket prototyped in the 1960s would have had enough power to propel a spaceship to mars in a matter of _weeks_, not years.
And the propellent is disjunct from the energy-source in this design, so you can use whatever you happen to find.

So, cudos for NASA to resume research in this directions, and
*/flame
Eat flaming death, No-Nukes_In_Space-Activists!
*/flame

Now we know where to land

[Soft]

Water is what a colony will need most. If one can get it on-site, it can make huge mass savings on what one must bring in from Earth. That, and the atmosphere (meteor protection, possibility to aerobrake when arriving) might make it easier to have a colony on Mars than on the Moon, even though it's much farther.

Re:Now we know where to land

[anshil]

The major advantage for Mars (aside from its carbon-dioxide atmosphere, and the recently confirmed water) is the gravity. Mars colonists would lose less bone mass relative to Moon colonists, absent artificial devices like centrifuges and the like.

One advantage of mars in a long term view (some hundret of years )is the abilitiy of terraforming. The idea is simple, do the same on mars on purpose we do currently on earth out of pure stupidness. Put lot's of cardbondioxide CO2 into the atomosphere and watch the planet temperature rise through the glass house effect.

Re:Now we know where to land

[Skyshadow]

The major advantage for Mars (aside from its carbon-dioxide atmosphere, and the recently confirmed water) is the gravity.

Whoa, slow down there, cowboy. The availablity of oxygen and hydrogen isn't just something to casually dismiss.

You put some sort of hard-to-break, long-lasting power source on the surface (nuclear battery or somesuch) and you can survive a lot of adversity when you have these sorts of raw materials. You can grow food in inflatible domes (most terrestrial crops would actually like the CO2 atmosphere of Mars better than our own), you can make air to breathe and you have water to drink. You can survive a really long time, even if Earth can't get you a supply ship for a few months (or years). Additionally, you can make rocket propellant, mix concrete and refine metals for your base, all using stuff you have laying around. Bury it all under a few meters of earth (er, mars) and you're safe from radiation thanks to the fact that Mars has an atmosphere running interference for you.

On the moon, if you rupture an air tank, you have to get into your lander and blast back to Earth pronto. The surface of Mars, on the other hand, could pretty easily be converted into the second safest place in the solar system.

Re:Now we know where to land

[ender81b]

As a general plug I would suggest to anyone interested in the possibilites of terraforming mars to read Kim Stanley Robinson's 3-part Mars series. All 3 won the Hugo (or was it nebula?). Great books.

Re:Now we know where to land

[anshil]

Just a nitpick: Mars' atmosphere is already over 90% CO2, I think. So what you actually need to increase is its density.

Hmmm might be :/ mars it too light.

Honestly I thing venus would be a far better target for terraforming. It's currently completly unsuitable for station there, we know. Thousend degrees is not comfortable, places where metal smelts. But aside that little problem it's perfect. Same weight than earth, nearly same materials, only in it's evolution something went another way than earth did. BTW: It's not so hot there because of the few kilometers that it is nearer to the sun, it's so hot there because glashouse effect went into a self recursive state there. (planet is prinicipally in a stable state, but of some reason it gets a bit warmer, some water vaporizes, since H20 is also a glashous gas, it get's warmer to the H20, more H20 vaprozies, warmer again, so on until at some point the water boils, you have a perfect glashouse, temperature skyrockets, metals smelt and some vaporize, they are also glashous gases, temperature rises more and you come to the second stable planet state venus is now.)

Now the idea is to get the planet back to the earth like state, maybe a bit more warmer since it's really nearer to the sun. (I think from the higher light impact it should be calculated only 20-30 degree's or such.) (not the tousend it has currently due to the glashouse) so with aprox. 40 on some places it would be a nice place to be.

The thing needed would be a "designer baktereria" that could live and exist at the outher atmosphere of venus, it would be a plant, with photosynthesis capabilities taking enery from the sun, splitting CO2, into O2 and uses the gained energy and carbon (C) to reproduce itself. As the bacteria reproduces and spreads itself more and more oxygen would come free, temprature would drop until to more comfortable values, there would be more space to life for this bacteria (or fellowers). Temprature would drop again, metals would get solid, water condenses into oceans, until we've earth like status there. Life habits would have changes so strong this designer bacteria would no longer be able to surve and die out. Now the planet is ready for humans to come by, brind their trees and crops, and plancton for the oceans to replace the 02 generation and be happy.

Sounds easy or? :o) Now just have to get a plantlike bacteria that can live at several 100 degree's and has some simple "float/flight capablity" to stay in higher orbit and not to fall on ground where death comes quick. After this is done, just shoot a small probe at venus, at wait 500 years :o) (or a bit more)

Re:Now we know where to land

[benjamindees]

(most terrestrial crops would actually like the CO2 atmosphere of Mars better than our own)
sorry to nitpick, but actually, most crops would be poisoned by the CO2 atmosphere of Mars as it stands now. It would take decades of terraforming before any "colonists" could grow things outside of greenhouses on Mars.

Re:Now we know where to land

[whanau]

If we were looking at teraforming the surface of mars then kickstarting the greeenhouse effect would be much easier if we used other chemicals such as methane and CFCs. These chemicals are much much more effective at trapping heat than C02 pound for pound.

Re:Now we know where to land

[rben]

Actually, once you are in orbit, you are about half-way to anywhere in the solar system. If I remember correctly, the minimum energy orbit to get to Mars is actually less than that to get to the Moon. It's a long flight though, 18 months, I think. That's also only if the Earth and Mars are in the right orientation, which I think happens only about once every three years, so you need to stay on the surface for another year and a half before heading back.

There are already designs for missions that involve manufacturing the fuel for the return mission using materials on Mars. It's reasonably easy to manufacture Methane on the surface. You just need Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, so if water is there and you can get to it easily, making methane to power a return trip should be easy. Just use the water for Hydrogen and Oxygen and the atmosphere for the Carbon. (Actually you could probably get oxygen from the soil, too, since it's got a lot of oxidized iron, also known as rust, in it.)

The biggest concern that I would have for a Mars mission is the toll it would take on the astronauts. It's a long trip with relatively high radiation. (You can only carry so much shielding.) Unless the crew module is spun to provide some artificial gravity, it's likely that the astronauts would be in pretty bad shape before they even got to Mars. Though there have been some very long stays in space stations, those guys weren't exactly fit for a night of clubbing when they got home.

All that said, I'd go in second! I, uh, just got to get permission from my girl friend first ...

Re:Now we know where to land

[Peyna]

I think you have a much greater chance of dying in a car accident than most things, except maybe smoking and heart disease.

Re:Now we know where to land

[cybrpnk]

Even MORE interesting is THIS image from the press kit that shows not only lots of water at the south pole but a significant concentration around the north pole and best of all - three or four EQUATORIAL (read warm) spots that seem fairly wet. Oaises, anyone? We just found our landing sites...

Re:Now we know where to land

[Lars T.]

Privatize spaceflight. Grant treaty provisions for private enterprise to occupy and OWN portions of the solar system (homesteader clause, like the US government did with the old west.

Yeah, that's what we need, make the big corporations richer. Sure, this time we won't have to kill the natives, but it's not like you can buy a couple of tools, and ride (or even walk) to a nice site to settle on.

this is how it begins

[CRAssEsT]

great, now we're planning on depleting the resources of yet another planet

Makes you wonder

[SevenTowers]

I'm looking forward to the day we can actually dig to some depth and see if some liquid water remains. DNA from a primitive lifeform might provide more info on how life emerged in the primordial soup. I know mars was geologicaly active (whats the name of that big 15km volcanoe...), so there's a chance that some heat is left inside. Was there a study done on this?

Re:Makes you wonder

[SevenTowers]

crap, that's 15 miles for the volcano, 24 km.

Re:Well this changes everything ....

[The Evil Beaver]

Yes, and with the Fe all over, set up roving factories to scoop up, filter, and create iron ingots. This should cause some greenhouse emissions, I believe, and a number of other gasses, I believe including steam, would help in the creation of an atmosphere.

What would really be interesting, though, would be how the Martian cities are in Cowboy Bebop. Though, I don't think that such a plan is really workable. It would be simpler and less expensive (in terms of more than just money) to terraform the entire planet.

Before Mars is terraformed, however, someone should be sent out to check the Pyramid, ruins, and other features of that area.

Terriforming Mars

[JPriest]

There are actually a few ideas in progress to melt the ice and Terriform Mars so that the climate is sufficient to support human life.

Re:Terriforming Mars

[cheezehead]

Ok, I give up. I don't understand it any more. I've followed the link, read the NASA article, and I still have this question:

I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's? Then, how are you going to maintain that pressure? The fact that Mars' gravity is about 1/3 of earth's is the big spoiler here, right? Assuming you can get all these greenhouse gases and heat up the atmosphere, wouldn't the atmosphere just boil away into outer space? I mean, given earth-like temperatures and pressures, a substantial fraction of the gas molecules would just reach escape velocity and be lost forever? What am I missing here???

Re:Terriforming Mars

[Rasta Prefect]

I assume terraforming implies creating an atmosphere that humans can breathe. So, around 20% O2, and 80% of something inert, presumably N2, but I guess something else could do as well. But, don't we need an atmospheric pressure similar to earth's?

We don't really need full atmospheric pressure. The problems can largely be solved by increasing the precentage of oxygen. Humans can pretty easily survive at a half or third of atmospheric pressure, provided that we have sufficient oxygen partial pressure to breathe. Think of what happens when an airplane loses cabin pressure at 30,000 feet - the oxygen masks come down so you can breathe, but peoples eyeballs don't fly out of their head or anyhing like that.

Re:Terriforming Mars

[cheezehead]

As you correctly point out, the average velocity is not the complete story. The distribution of velocities will probably obey the Maxwell-Boltzmann laws of statistical mechanics (too long ago since I took it in college, but it is understood rather well).
The problem is that the molecules with the highest velocity may escape. If the temperature is in balance, a new equilibrium will establish itself, and again, the molecules with the highest velocities will escape. As someone else pointed out, there will need to be a replenishment mechanism. I'm not saying it can't be done, but consider that it's hard enough to establish a breathable atmosphere in the first place. A self-replenishing one is probably even trickier.

Then again, what do I know?

Re:Terriforming Mars

[Rasta Prefect]

All quite true. However, if you can get it to the point where you can be outside part of the day without a space suit, even if you do have fairly hefty water consumption, it still beats a bulky space suit whenever you need to go out.

Re:Wouldn't it be cool...

[vena]

(un?)fortunately, james lovelock discovered in the late 1960's that atmospheric volitility is where to look for signs of life, and mars' reached equilibrium long ago. we may indeed find signs of previous life forms, but it more than likely died off millions upon millions of years ago.

if you're interested, dr. lovelock was working on this very thing, finding life on mars for NASA when he formulated this hypothesis. the details of which can be found in a very good book called The Ages of Gaia.

(and no, what you saw in the Final Fantasy movie is not really Gaia theory.)

enjoy :)

Re:How about Earth?

[Skyshadow]

Well, it's not necessarily water -- they're picking up hydrogen. It's just that hydrogen happens to be most easily stored as water. In any event, it's easy to make water if you have hydrogen and oxygen, assuming you're willing to spend the power to make it happen.

Now, on the other hand, if it turns out that spectrometry works differently on Mars than it does on Earth, we've got a lot bigger problems with that whole fundemental science thing.

Re:Somewhat Interesting

[Skyshadow]

Might not be a good idea to drink the water until we find out for sure.

Well, liquid water is probably way below the surface if it exists at all. Everything else is probably ice.

Besides that, though, I wouldn't worry too much -- bacteria has to evolve to both take particular advantage of a host and to overcome that host's immune system. Even if you subscribe to the idea that terrestrial life may have traveled to Earth from Mars, chances are that even a Martian "cold" wouldn't be adaptible to modern humanity. There's just to big of an evolutionary gap.

But yeah, I'll admit that I think I'd still take a look under a microscope first if my drinking water hadn't been purified or manufactured.

Re:The Discovery channel..

[Skyshadow]

...but it is a likely case that a one could cause the destruction of the human race unless we populate another planet as well to ensure the survival of the species.

This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.

I wouldn't so much list a second haven from extinction as a driving factor in pushing to colonize Mars. Instead, I think that our very basic instinct to push outwards is what will drive us there -- whenever people think they can expand into an area, they go for it. We find the resources we need, we adapt to the environment, and (when necessary) we beat down the locals (even when the locals are us).

Quayle was Right

[pryan]

Who would have thought? Well, half right, at least. Or, should I say, half-assed right?

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same
distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures
where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that
means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89

Explanation of Asteroid Belt

[tepes]

One neat thing about the info released today is that it supports what Richard Hoagland has been saying for months. See pictures here and here.

At his website you can find out how this validates the theory that Mars was once the satellite of the planet that formed the asteroid belt when it broke up for unknown reasons. (The pattern of water is indicative of tidal action.)

Re:Explanation of Asteroid Belt

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

I've always heard that if you put all those asteroids together in the asteroid belt, you still wouldn't have enought mass to make much of a planet (think very small Jovian moon sized). Is this no longer a common theory?

The common theory is that the asteroid belt is a remnant of the creation of the planets-a planet that never formed. A few people are very much out on a limb in suggesting that the belt was a planet. Those ideas appear to owe more to Space Opera than to space science. If a planet did explode, of course most of the material could conveniently be postulated to have left the solar system, never to return. The proponents, mainly the eccentric astronomer Tom van Flandern, could just be right, but there isn't any particular reason to suppose so as yet.

Re:Explanation of Asteroid Belt

[quantaman]

A piece of advice, Richard Hoagland may or may not be right. But using Art Bell to give him scientific credibility is NOT a good move!

Re:Explanation of Asteroid Belt

[passion]

Well, the death star was long ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Various pieces could have been flung on a trajectory taking it into the sun, or even into the Yucatan peninsula - killing off all the dinosaurs... but that's just another deranged theory.

Re:Explanation of Asteroid Belt

[Royster]

you can find out how this validates the theory that Mars was once the satellite of the planet that formed the asteroid belt when it broke up for unknown reasons.

The big problems with such a theory are that the asteroids are not made of material which has undergone differentiation. When a large planet forms, the heat generted by brining all of the material together melts it. It then undergoes a process of differentiation with heavier metals, like iron, forming a core and lighter materials, like those in the Earth's crust, rising to the surface. From spectroscopic analysis, it seems that the asteroids are completely undifferentiated.

So, a seemingly attractive theory such as the demise of a planet (and what would generate enough energy to blow it up?) fails to have much of a basis when you bring some real science to bear.

Then MarsHydro could become a reality...?

[Wonderkid]

A few years ago after NASA first concluded there may be water on Mars (from the patterns in the hillsides), I put this up, with toungue half in cheek: http://www.marshydro.com. I wonder how much people would pay to drink the stuff? If people will pay $100,000 (on eBay) for a Segway, what will they pay for bottled Mars water bought back from missions?

Re:Then MarsHydro could become a reality...?

[Combuchan]

Not likely, if you look at the deal with moon rocks which is another example of NASA missing out on lost commercial opportunity.

From this Google result: A sample of lunar dust, weighing only a few milligrams, sold at a Superior Galleries auction in California in 1993 for $42,500
(Final Frontier, May/June 1993, p6). A short while later, a sale of Russian lunar samples took place in New York at a Southeby's auction. An estimated one carat rock fragment sold for a record $442,000 (Final Frontier, March/April, 1994, pp.
58-61)

Couple this with policy gathered from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG): "Moon rocks gathered by the Apollo missions are considered national treasures and cannot be privately owned or sold." (OIG's New Reports Dec 1999.)

Sure, MarsHydro is a good idea. But look at NASA's failure to capitalise on the moon-rock market. Not gonna happen with this NASA. Oh well.

yet another argument for the privitasation of NASA. Oh well.

Re:Then MarsHydro could become a reality...?

[Detritus]

If NASA sold some Moon rocks, the money would go into the federal government's general fund, not the NASA budget. So what would be the point of selling them?

Re:Well this changes everything ....

[fferreres]

Brings to me the book series Red, Blue and Green Mars. They guy that wrote those books was (apparently) involved with the NASA and he developed some real physics on how to terraform Mars.

Interesting reading to anyone that likes sci-fi, specially hard sci-fi (the books not difficult or anything, it's just realistic).

Water was very important. You can see it also in the Total Recall film, melting the water was the key (though here it's a riddiculous "Melt & Play")...

whew!

[psych031337]

Damn I am glad about this discovery. Actually I am almost feeling good enough to get off Prozac.

That means that our couragous space explorers are able to drink a decent whiskey on the rocks after travelling to mars for years, fleeing the problems of Planet Earth. After a ride like this, they will need one, that is for sure.

Gotta love science.

Re:The Discovery channel..

[cheezehead]

This is actually an exaggeration from hollywood -- the meteors left in our solar system are not large enough to cause a global extinction of a race as tenacious as humans.

Well, that's a relief! Unfortunately, it's complete and utter nonsense. A hit by a somewhat sizeable asteroid or comet would not only wipe out the human race, but probably most lifeforms on earth. Oh, and it's not size that matters, it's kinetic energy, which is 0.5*m*v^2. Dependent on mass (~size), but more on velocity, since that gets squared.

Hypothetical but realistic example: take a (spherical) piece of rock with a radius of 10 km, hitting the earth at 50 km/s. Assuming a density of 4000 kg/m^3, that gives us a mass of 1.68*10^16 kg. The kinetic energy is roughly
2.1*10^25 Joules. That's the equivalent of 4.67 billion megatons of TNT. Or 467,000,000,000 Hiroshima bombs all set off at the same moment.

Can someone do a sanity check on this? It seems shockingly high.

Assumptions:
1 Megaton TNT ~ 4.5*10^15 J
Hiroshima bomb ~ 10 kilotons of TNT

Fact: volume of a sphere is (4/3)*pi*r^3.

No it didn't

[Goonie]

The nuclear thermal rocket is considerably better than any chemical rocket, but it's not nearly good enough to allow you to take a non-ballistic trajectory to Mars. What it *does* do is let you carry a lot less propellant, so you can carry more other stuff (like people, supplies, and equipment).

To do the weeks instead of months thing, you need something more exotic again, like an Orion (push the craft along by exploding nuclear weapons behind it), a fusion drive, or maybe a laser-powered light sail (though presumably you need a laser on Mars to slow it down again . . . ).

Ok let's stop looking for water for a bit

[LazyDawg]

When you are growing plants, you need to have nitrogen all around in the soil and air or not much will get produced. Where are we going to be getting this vital chemical for life on other planets? Importing huge tanks of nitrogen from Earth limits the size of our hermetic domes, and greatly increases maintenance costs.

Is there enough nitrogen in the Martian atmosphere or soil, or will we have to import it?

Re:Ok let's stop looking for water for a bit

[vena]

exactly, mars is nearly devoid of nitrogen (2.7%, earth's atmosphere is 79% nitrogen). the entire planet reached chemical equilibrium some time ago. this is yet another publicity stunt to get money for sending shit to mars. NASA has been doing it since the 60's and the viking missions. back then it was *just* life on mars, now we're easily wowed by the thought of water.

not that learning more isn't fun and all, but cries of "water means life!" are unfounded and dumb.

Re:Ok let's stop looking for water for a bit

[markj02]

2.7% of Mars's atmosphere is still plenty of nitrogen. Maybe you won't get bacteria that can fix it right away, but you can easily convert that using technological means.

Re:The Discovery channel..

[Veteran]

Sorry - you are wrong about that - it is not a Hollywood exaggeration. There are plenty of rocks in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter which are large enough to cause a Permian level extinction on the Earth. These rocks are from time to time deflected by the massive gravitational field of Jupiter in such a way as to become potentially hazardous to Earth .

The object Toutatis . Is an example of a large asteroid which has been deflected in this way. Fortunately the orbit of Toutatis won't allow it to hit us any time soon - but it is plenty big enough - about 2.8 Km across - to kill billions of people if it did. On average the Earth is struck by a rock that big about every 8 million years - not a Dinosaur killer - but enough to effectively destroy civilization.

Re:The Discovery channel..

[Veteran]

The 4.67 billion megatons figure is correct for your assumptions.

The good news is that there is only about a one in three billion chance of a rock that size hitting the earth this year. These are long odds - but the chance is not zero.

Compare To Photos of Martian South Pole Reveals..

[cybrpnk]

What's really interesting is to compare the neutron maps with photo maps of the Martian ice cap on the south pole here. You've got to be careful about the scale and orientation of these two images, since they are totally different (90 degrees is at three-o-clock on the neutron map, nine-o-clock on the photo map) but what's really facinating is that the visible ice pack is not circular-symmetrical around the pole and the neutron data IS.

Re:The Discovery channel..

[Peyna]

http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/World /Hiroshima.html

Little Boy (Hiroshima) was 12.5 kilotons.
Fat Man (Nagasaki) was 22 kilotons.

You're close enough, I just thought some people might be interested in the actually statistics. Aren't the atomic bombs we have now into the megatons?

Re:Compare To Photos of Martian South Pole Reveals

[cybrpnk]

Even MORE interesting is THIS image from the press kit that shows not only lots of water at the south pole but a significant concentration around the north pole and best of all - three or four EQUATORIAL (read warm) spots that seem fairly wet. Oaises, anyone? We just found our landing sites...

Miscellany

[BlackGriffen]

The really interesting part of this report is in the beginning: "The process continues generating a cascade of protons and neutrons in the upper few meters (yards) of the martian soil." What do they mean by the upper few meters? I would tend to think no more than a dozen, but that's the problem with language like "few". At any rate, this does not preclude the existence of water in the more central latitudes, it only rules out water 'close' to the surface. It's still possible that there are underground aquifers buried beyond the range of the method they used to detect hydrogen. Their own map even supports my theory; there are slightly bluish regions in figure three as far north as the equator (the limit of the map). Since the signal strength is dependent on both the depth and size of the hydrogen sample, this interpretation is highly probable, I think.

This also has interesting consequences on the search for life on Mars: if they want the best odds of finding life, they will need to go to the edge of the region that has the water signals, and dig down until they hit the upper edge of the permafrost. Things like Viking and Sojourner (if it looked for life) only looked at the surface, and didn't have a good idea of where on the surface of the planet to land to look (I'm not sure where they landed, but I'm betting it wasn't outside of the 120 degree belt where the water signals are scarce [assuming the North and South poles are approximately the same]).

I wonder why they didn't publish data for the North polar region? I find it hard to imagine that there was an asymmetry on the planet, or that the probe switched it's instruments off because they were only interested in one pole. I'm not implying that NASA is trying to hide anything, perhaps the data was symmetrical enough that they didn't want to waste their time publishing it on a preliminary report like this one. They may also not be finished crunching the data from the North, which would make this a very preliminary report. I'd still like to see the results for the whole of Mars, though.

The last interesting possibility is that some of their data doesn't point at water at all. They have detected the presence of hydrogen, and water is only the most abundant hydrogen containing compound on Earth. Other chemicals that contain hydrogen that may (this is a big may) be present are: methane (CH4), lipids (too many to list), oil (again, many), ammonia (NH3), carbohydrates (name literally means that it contains carbon and hydrogen, e.g. C6H12O6) etc. What I'm saying is that there may be oil deposits on Mars (very slim chance, but not nonexistent). More likely it's just water and/or ammonia, but all this means is that I'm even more eager to at least send another probe that can test a sample for life and run a spectral analysis on a small core sample (assuming they can get the sample to the surface before it evaporates).

I'd still like to go back to the Moon and get stations established there first (availability year round and shorter distance being two of the main reasons), but I am suddenly a lot more interested in going to Mars, too.

BlackGriffen

Thanks.

[BlackGriffen]

I wonder if it was summer in the North when this was taken? If it was, I'd like to see more data half a Marian year from now, to see just how permanent this permafrost is. If you look at the picture, there is a concentration of hydrogen in the North, but it is not nearly as large as in the South. This raises some very interesting possibilities. What this means is that there is condensation on mars (of one form or another), and thus it may be possible to make (inefficient compared to on Earth) stills on Mars! Visions of Dune are flying through my head right now. I wonder if there are sandworms there (bow before Shai Hulud)? ;)

BlackGriffen

There is no "face" on Mars

[Special Ed]

Please see this great NASA site with pictures showing that it's not a face.

Of course, I fully expect a reply that this is all just a government sponsored cover-up/conspiracy.