Close Mars Means Close-Up Pictures

Guttata writes " space.com has posted 1 of 2 images taken by Hubble last night, dubbed the best Mars globe photo ever taken. The second image will be posted at 4 p.m. ET. Cool!" aderuwe points to a report on the Hubble site itself. Finally, dpp writes "Space.com is reporting how astronomers using the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) here at the Joint Astronomy Centre have made what are thought to be the sharpest ground-based images of Mars to date. They'll be studying the spectra of the infrared light to look for the signatures of minerals that would indicate the past presence of liquid water, which could have hosted life."

Comments

Something is closer...

[azzy]

... and so we can see it better.

Wow

best Mars photo ever?

[xv4n]

images taken by Hubble last night, dubbed the best Mars globe photo ever taken...

...from earth orbit, indeed.

Re:best Mars photo ever?

[Reckless Visionary]

Actually, from anywhere man-made cameras have taken a "Mars globe photo". As the article explains, Mars orbiters can take only pictures of strips of the surface, each at the same time of day. Those strips are reconstructed to simulate a globe picture, but do not show the range of night-time to daytime that a full globe shot, like this one, does.

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[kinnell]

The trouble is that in order to search for life on Europa, you would need a submarine probe which can drill through several kilometers of ice. It would then have to send any data using a method other than radio, as radio waves don't propogate very well under water. No doubt a probe will be sent eventually (I believe there is one being planned), but it's technically a lot harder than sending probes to Mars.

Have we become obsessive?

[NaugaHunter]

Science fiction has apparently driven us to obsession over whether or not Mars had life. While it may be interesting in a historical sense, can't we just move on for now? While the search for water is important, as it could influence the ease of colonization, can't we wait until we're there until we look for life?

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to know. And if it's just a matter of looking at data we're getting anyway I'm not against it. It just seems sometimes that it sounds obsessive, especially once the press gets ahold of the stories. It would seem more useful to analyze weather currents, mineral deposits, and other such issues to find good places to land/build, and if there are any local metal deposits and the like.

Re:Have we become obsessive?

[cK-Gunslinger]

Rest assured, all these and more experiments/observations will be performed if/when we get a decent probe on Mars. The problem is hype. We, as a society, need and want hype. If NASA declared, "We're spending $5B on a probe to examine wind speed on Mars," the general public probably isn't going to rally behind them with anything even remotely resembling enthusiam. They need a little "potential alien life" hype to justify themselves once in a while. Meanwhile, those "in the know" will understand the true value of such research.

Re:Have we become obsessive?

[vidnet]

If there is life on Mars, what rights do we have to colonize it?

Actually, I'd like to get people on Mars first too. We'd probably find life sooner with people there, even if colonizing takes a while. Just make very, very sure the planet isn't contaminated in the process.

Exploitable mineral content

[Yanray]

Exploitable mineral content

I want to find some Rare Earth Elements and excessive mineral/gem deposits. Showing pictures of a 300-carat diamond sitting on the surface of Mars will get us their a lot faster then looking for trace amounts of water.

Yes I understand that it is necessary to sustain life on Mars but your average investor/citizen of such an endeavor couldn't give a rats ass.

Re:See The Blue Atmosphere?

[Jedi Holocron]

Opps...

I actually should have sent you to The Color of Mars bit on this site.

Thanks.

There's a Steven Wright joke that applies

[HarveyBirdman]

"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."

It's expensive and dangerous and there quite simply is no political will to go to Mars, and politics, sadly, rules the minds of man.

Personally, I love space stuff, but even I would like to see some more logical things done around Earth (orbital industries, commercial ventures, etc.) before we wind up with another Apollo-loike boondoggle.

Re:There's a Steven Wright joke that applies

[da' WINS pimp]

>before we wind up with another Apollo-loike boondoggle.

Well I never thought of Apollo as a boondoggle. The shuttle is IMO, but not Apollo. Apollo inspired a whole generation of us to become engineers and scientists. The payoff for civilization on that one was huge.

You are right about seeing more things done around earth(LEO). But the key part of your phrase is commercial ventures. NASA was founded to do the big stuff - like Mars. And we can do it within NASA's current budget. See the Mars Society for more information.

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[4im]

[Life needs light]

Nice idea, but just not true, making this a bad idea (even if detailed pics from Europa sure would be welcome). Deep submarine life does exist around sources of heat (deep-sea volcanoes etc.) without light getting there - such life would be more probable on Europa than these fantastic lifeforms.

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[rhadamanthus]

Nevermind the possibility that introducing a man-made probe into Europa's ecosystem (if it exists) may be the demise of said ecosystem.

---rhad

Re:Search for life in Europa instead

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. They're afraid of fscking things up at Lake Vostok. I don't see how we can do this on Europa without catastrophic effects.

Enjoy your insightful points. :)

Your moderator.

Why so excited?

[baz00f]

I'm sorry, but if you look at the numbers here you'll see that past perihelic oppositions of Mars to earth are just about as close as this one. Year 2003= 34.6 million miles. Year 1956 = 35.1 mill. = difference of 1.4%. Year 1971 = 34.9 mill. = diff. 0.9%. Year 1988= 36.5 mill = diff. 5.5%

I doubt that such a marginally closer opposition distance significantly improves observations of anything.

Re:Too bad it's August...

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Northern thinking. Observers in Austraila and Chile, and the people who are running the Hubble Space Telescope and other platforms in orbit are loving it.

Re:Life

[danila]

and possibly allow us to skip centuries or eons of technological progress

You see, that's exactly the catch. We haven't yet encountered those advanced alien civilizations and it might be that we will never ever find them. So for the time being we have no conceivable way to "skip centuries or eons of technological progress" and need to proceed gradually and step by step. That's why we needed Moon landing, that's why we needed Fon Braun's rockets, that's why we need to travel to Mars. And since we cannot be sure which attempts will be fruitful and which will not, we need to try everything and diversify. Personally I think that at present almsot all space exploration is waste of time and resources, because in my opinion nanotech and AI are much more important, since they might actually allow us to "skip centuries or eons of technological progress" and jump straight to intergalactic travel. But I am not so sure as to insist that we stop our space programs, because I may be wrong and space might be important even in short term.