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Mars-Express On Its Way

Posted by michael on from the au-revoir dept.

Nebukadnezar writes "Two weeks ago, Mars-Express tested its sensors and took some marvelous data and pics of the Earth-Moon system from a distance of about 8*10^6 km. Nice to see our neighborhood once in a while. BTW check out the spectrometer readings of Earth: water shows up very clearly. I wonder what this instrument will tell us about water on Mars..."

2 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Water on Mars. . . by astrobabe · · Score: 4, Informative

    This instrument won't tell us anything about water on Mars in the way in which you're thinking. The spectra of Earth is it's atmospheric spectra. We already know about the atmospheric spectra of Mars from ground based observations and other space missions and we know that the bulk of the water we infer to be there from surface geology is NOT trapped in the atmosphere. At this point in order to find water we need a better gamma ray spectrometer (not optical and IR), but current analysis shows that there isn't enough carbon dioxide on Mars to have caused what water ice there is now to melt.

  2. unmanned/manned exploration by Madcapjack · · Score: 4, Funny

    Unmanned exploration is good because it brings good solid data. Manned exploration is good because we have opposable thumbs.

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