NASA Selects Mars Landing Sites

carstene writes "NASA has announced the finial landing sites for the upcoming mars rover missions. Looks like they are going looking for water in a dried lake bed and a promising site that looks like it contains hematite."

Comments

If Kryptonite make Kryptonians weak

[wowbagger]

If Kyptonite makes Kryptionians weak, does hematite make Hemos weak?

Perhaps Hemos should stay away from that area of Mars...

Hematite?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be the use of hematite?

Re:Hematite?

[eggstasy]

If you remember the controversial meteor of martian origin that was found a while ago, you will also recall that the alleged signs of life were iron crystals of a kind that is usually, at least on Earth, only produced by bacteria.
Hematite is an iron ore. It's logical to assume they're looking for more rocks like that one, which could point towards the existance of life on Mars, past or present.

Re:Hematite?

[Tablizer]

What would be the use of hematite?

To fix the hemaloose :-P

Re:Hematite?

[young-earth]

Check out the article which explains that researchers now

think that there is now abundant evidence that most and probably all of the magnetites in ALH 84001 formed because of shock heating of carbonate. Faceted magnetites resembling the supposedly biogenic magnetites are crystallographically oriented in the carbonate lattice and could not have formed inside bacteria. We infer that ALH 84001 magnetites differ from abiogenic terrestrial magnetites because terrestrial carbonates never experienced the unique impact history of ALH 84001.

So if NASA is looking for hematite in order to prove something, they'll just be proving that the rocks they found got banged around.

Somehow that seems like a colossal waste of time and money, so hopefully they have some more noble, or more useful, reason to pick that location.

Re:Hematite?

[barakn]

The problem with Creationists is that they'll post without knowing what they are talking about. Gray hematite can precipitate out of hotsprings here on Earth, and spectroscopic evidence has been found of gray hematite on Mars. NASA is looking for evidence of ancient hotsprings on Mars. The Martian meteorite has nothing to do with it. young-earth's post should be modded Overrated.

Some harder than others

[djupedal]

"Landing on Mars is very difficult, and it's harder on some parts of the planet than others," said Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science in Washington, D.C. "In choosing where to go, we need to balance science value with engineering safety considerations at the landing sites. The sites we have chosen provide such balance."

And the Finial site, may well prove to be the hardest of all...

Not biological

[barakn]

Gray hematite can precipitate out of hotsprings here on Earth, and spectroscopic evidence has been found of gray hematite on Mars. NASA is looking for evidence of ancient hotsprings on Mars, which would only point to liquid water, not life.

Re:They oughta send one to the Face

[assosiation]

note the quote "Once they reach their landing sites, each rover's prime mission will last at least 90 martian days (92 Earth days). The rovers are solar-powered, and in approximately 90 days, dust accumulating on the solar arrays likely will be diminishing the power supply. "

Have those people ever heard of wipers????? :)

DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

DUH hematite is what makes mars appear red, that shit is all over the damn planet not just in that spot.

hematite- latin root similar to hemoglobin, got its name from the red appearance......same as Hematite

it there a GPS satellite in Martian orbit?

[The Lynxpro]

seems like that would be of more use... I'd love to see a private corporation do that as well as send a "spy" satellite with decent imaging equipment to do an independent analysis of the Cydonia region... I bet that endeavour would go *missing* (cough cough)....another victim of the Cosmic Boogeyman that dislikes most probes we send to that planet...either that or its the Cybermen behind it... NASA has very little credibility in my book. Any agency that claims to lose a probe because they were using English measurements when the scientific community has used the metric system for a century (not to mention the US Military since the creation of NATO) just doesn't pan out... Maybe we should get them to certify the next Presidential election...