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The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures
An anonymous reader writes "The Spirit rover's first soil analysis reveals some puzzling features about Gusev crater. The region seems to contain the greenish silicate mineral, olivine, which usually is considered water-reactive and thus volcanic in origin. For olivine to be found in the soil may point to rock formation during a drier period in martian history, even with strong evidence for sampling in an ancient lakebed. A second puzzle is why the soil seems so crusty. After the rover arm pressed soil down, the top layer of dust hardly moved, a finding that suggests something may be binding the dust like some type of salt or thin cement." For even more and better Mars pictures, read on below.
mlyle writes "I've spent a few hours hacking together some software to deal with the Mars Exploration Rover imagery at JPL. The software puts together a webpage and RDF feed of new raw imagery as it is posted to the JPL site, along with technical information decoded about how the picture was taken. It also produces stereo anaglyphs and color images that NASA has not seen fit to convert and make publically available. Be sure to also check out the ultra high resolution image of the lander as viewed from Spirit."
There's also been an update for the Maestro visualisation and planning thingy. I'm downloading it right now - let's get some more BitTorrent seeds up and running! :)
There are some puzzles and there are surprises
One unexpected finding was the Moessbauer spectrometer's detection of a mineral called olivine, which does not survive weathering well
It doesn't survive weathering well in Earth like conditions. Mars, on the other hand, has extreme and totally different climate conditions and it should not be a surprise that minerals exhibit different properties.
Free XBox, PS2
It's been waiting how long for us to visit? Come on think aboutit, it has been just hanging around for a few hundred years, that we have been looking at it, and they expect it to be soft and fresh?!?!??
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
I guess it's good NASA didn't seem a spotty teenager inside the probe to send the images.
"That's not Mars, it's Paris Hilton"
Given the current information we estimate that we will be able to travel to pluto in 3 years time.
...
In today's fast-paced modern world, a mere 3 years get you:
- to Pluto
- a copy of Duke Nukem Forever
or perhaps I should await my return from Pluto to get DNF
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
a color CCD would require a sensor for each of R, G, and B pixel values. By using a monochrome CCD, they could pack as many pixels into the available space and use color filters to determine the RGB values of each pixel instead.
essentially, they are tripling their resolution at the expense of having to take three monochrome pictures each through different color filters to get a single full color picture.
I mean, they're the ones who are always talking about the windstorms that plague the planet, yes?
And for how long have these windstorms been occurring? Millions and millions of years?
So it seems reasonable to conclude that the dust/soil on the planet is going to be fairly homogenous by now.
They talk about the rock abrasion tool and the various spectrometers and what not, but the tool I'd like to hear about is the shovel. The dried lakebeds on Mars are no doubt little different than the dried lakebeds on Earth. To get to anything really interesting, you need to dig.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Interesting, as the marks of the airbags are clearly visible on all pics. Or am I missing the point of a rover-arm having less force than a bouncing-lander-in-an-airbag?
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Because conventional colour is too limiting. With filter wheels, there's the possibility of far more scientific data - there's (IIRC) eleven different filters available on Spirit's pancam, instead of the integrated red, green and blue in a consumer-level CCD. There's wide-pass and narrow-pass filters, near-infra-red - they're effectively magic sunglasses which can be used to look for interesting geology from afar.
Surprisingly few spacecraft have taken conventional colour cameras with them. Some of the Voyager colour shots of Jupiter, for instance, are definitely made up of multiple exposures taken at slightly different times - if you look at the red, green and blue channels, you can see how the clouds have moved while the exposures were being taken.
I think the CCDs on modern telescopes are monochrome as well, with particular filters used for looking at interesting wavelengths and things like that. 'Colour' shots are again made by combining multiple exposures...
It's typical for space science applications.
What you want on a space probe is maximal CCD chip area-- not to take things up with filters. So they have a color wheel instead. Also, the filters of ranges that the eye is sensitive to in red, green, and blue is not very useful scientifically.
They have a choice of 8 filters on each of the pancams, and the left filters are in the visible range of light. However, there are caveats, as human visual perception is a complex thing. As a result, colors are going to be off even if a picture is shot with all 7 visual range filters.
The image processing software I've written makes a best guess with 2/4/7 and 2/5/6 filter sets. It is pretty close, but extreme colors are wrong (the red point is shifted by about 30nm) I hope to use the cases where they've shot additional pictures (e.g. magic carpet) to improve things further for selected images in the next couple of days.
...but what about this picture ?
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Yum! I remember when my Mom used to make me a big glass of Olivine when I got home from school. Just add it into a glass warm milk, and yum! Wholesome and delicious, rich in essential vitamins and minerals!
Just imagine all that Olivine on Mars! Certainly it'd be worthwhile to travel to Mars, given an unbounded supply of ready-made food already on the surface. This, my friends, could cure world hunger!
In fact, now that they've found that Mars has a lot of Olivine, I'd start speculating that the dust is being bound together by Tang.
I find it interesting all the rocks in the pictures look small enough for any human to pick up and throw. I don't see any large outcropping of boulders and such. Why isn't the variety of the rock sized greater?
-Oy Vey
There was no plate tectonics on Mars so it is extremely unlikely that minerals got concentrated, and even if they did, there is no crustal movement to bring this stuff to the surface. I think that the mining prospects on Mars are bleak.
Now we only need to get that foundry over there at a million dollars/kg ...
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Water reactive means it reacts with water and therefore wouldn't form in a wet environment. That means that if you find a rock with this mineral it must be igneous in nature because the other main type of rock formation occurs on seabeds, thus in the presence of water. I'd love for them to find some sandstone or limestone, that'd be a pretty clear indication of water in the past.
It has all the latest Mars Rover info as well, and a direct link to JPL for the latest and greatest pictures and info. www.marsquestonline.org
Go hit it. It's worth a look around.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Of course the show is 50 minutes or so, and the animation you want is in the middle. I taped it when it was broadcast, and I do like the scene you are describing.
Hope that helps.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
A consequence of space exploration being government run is the fact that missions will be continually over funded and unambitious, as successive presidents and politicians look at NASA and the entirety of space as merely being an extremely expensive photo opportunity. It took 25 years from the invention of modern rockets to the moon landings, and in nearly 40 after that, we've done little more than send up continuous, well publicised but ultimately futile shuttle missions. Much as it pains me to say it, the future of space lies in private hands who have the ambition to(pardon the pun) reach for the stars
" I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. " --Dr. Jerry Pournelle
I read at one of the links that "Olivine is also found in many iron-nickel meteorites. Not just as small grains but as significantly sized crystals sometimes occupying over 50% of the meteorites volume."
I do not know anything about minerals really, but if the lander is exploring a crater, couldn't this come from the meteorite that created the crater in the first place?
True ravers don't need drugs
Eggzactly.
One of the less ridiculous "proofs" for God's existence is that, "the world exists. Because there cannot be infinite causes, an ultimate originator must exist and that originator is God."
The "no infinite causes" ('nic') line is from Aristotle.
The problem is that NIC is only true if you take Aristotle's word for it. Now, he was assuredly a smart dude, but he was not infallible. His philosophy denies the existence of atomic particles (so if you agree with Aristotle 100%, you either have a fantastic take on all the science of the last 100 years, or you're provably wrong about something.)
The second problem is the assumption that, "if there is an ultimate originator, then it is God."
This is also simply an article of faith, which does not per se make it wrong, merely unjustified.
I can say with equal emphasis and personal faith that, "Since there cannot be an ultimate originator, there must be infinite causes." Further, I could say: "Therefore, those infinite causes are God", or equally, "Therefore, belief in God as an ultimate originator is fallacious."
No one can disprove that without assuming something on faith, either in a trusted authority (philosophical, religious, or otherwise) because no one actually has evidence either way.
Faith is a natural and healthy part of the human experience. Self righteousness and moral absolutism are comfy illusions. The difference between faith and zealotry is that zealots can't or won't change their beliefs under any cirumstances. Even when their own intelligence officers tell them that Iraq abandonded it's WMD programs in 1991.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
There is actually a green sand beach on the big island of Hawaii.
It is little known, and difficult to get to, but a long drive down
an unpaved road, and two or so mile hike will get you to it.
I once met an minerologist gathering samples there.
He told me the beach was green because of a large olivine vein
which was eroded over the years by the ocean waves.
pics: http://www.techfreakz.org/blacksand/
Anyone that isn't a religious nut can come to the conclusion pretty easily that life in some form is out there in all probability.
Probability less than 1.00 is not proof. If proof was found that life exists or had existed on Mars in the past, then it changes the way we look at the Universe. If life could develop on two planets in the same solar system, what does that say for the possibility and commonality of life elsewhere?
Perhaps Mars is boring. It's the same argument people said about the lunar missions a generation ago. It only became boring because we let it.
Take a step back and stand in awe of the fact that we have the ability to even do what we are doing. It isn't boring. It wasn't in 1969 and it isn't now. It should be considered anything but boring. Maybe if we hadn't gotten "bored" in 1972, it wouldn't be a robot up there analyzing samples up there and sending back imagery used preprogrammed commands on a 20 minute delay. It would be a man or woman instead, with us hearing their voice, the excitement and thrill at walking on another world and making that thrill of discovery, curiousity and exploration infectious to entire planet and to another generation. But we didn't. We should have.
Have a sense of romance and excitement. I wish I could send commands to the rover along the lines of "Look that way! What's over there?!?" or "Drive over there and look behind that rock.".
There are some things that should transcend day-to-day living and the focus on our daily lives and exist simply for the sake of doing it, cost and politics aside. Space exploration should be one of those things.
You've answered your own question here... it's a matter of timing. Olivine rapidly degrades in the presence of water... on a geologic time scale. In human timescales, you don't notice this. That's why you can find green sand beaches on the Big Island - as you note, it's one big active volcano, and the olivine there was relatively recently produced. Gustev crater is thought to be a geologically old feature, and if water was present there, it should have been there a long time ago (based on current theories of the planet's climatological evolution). The fact that that olivine was laid down a long time ago and hasn't shown signs of water induced breakdown, means that water probably hasn't been there since olivine was formed.
I think you are confusing scales. In the short term finding Osama MAY be more important than finding life, or traces of, somewhere else in the cosmos. But in the long term Osama doesn't matter in the least, neither does 9/11, America, You, I, or much else. Finding life would answer a COSMIC question, killing Osama with some little Geneva convention violating bug would answer a wholly secular, and temporal question.
Finding traces of life on Mars would further the work of Galaleo[sp], Darwin, Einstein, and all the other great minds who pushed the boundries of knowledge, who led to BIGGER questions. Finding Osama would make George Bush look like he already did not waste BILLIONS (not just millions) of dollars, and MIGHT increase Americas sense of security by a minute modicum.
Finding life would challenge theology, and put some serious stress on the creationists, which in my opinion is a good thing. It also would expand the Earthly feilds of science, answering some time-old questions. Finding Osama and killing him would only answer the question "Where is Osama?", which is of little importance to the world-as-a-whole, and the greater reach of intellectual history streaching before us.
Finding life would be comforting to us, now and generations hence. We would for once know that we are not alone, and that the odds of alien life, albeit simple, are greater than some nay-sayers say. Finding Osama, well, would be comforting to the US, at least until the next "evil doer" comes along to rain on our parade.
You must look at the bigger picture. Killing Osama is a sign of hatred, dark emotions, revenge, war. Finding life, a sign of hope, progress (in a good way), knowledge, and a greater respect for life itself. What is wrong with embracing both goals, vengence and death, and hope and respect?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
To what end do we use the answer to the question?
Well, inasmuch as the desire to know is part of our (humans) nature, knowing is an end in itself. That is, knowledge doesn't have to be useful as a means to an end to be worth pursuing. That's just the way we are. Knowledge often *is* useful, of course, but it doesn't have to be.
While I'm fascinated by the rovers on Mars and finding out what's there, is that really the best way to spend $400 million (not just dollars but resources)?
It's important to remember that when NASA spends USD 400M to learn about Mars, it's not as if they're dumping that money into a big pit, and then expecting to be given the information in exchange. They're paying contractors, vendors, and hosts of other private individuals and businesses for their time and efforts. The money is injected directly into the economy, which is a Good Thing. People often talk (though the parent didn't) about how the money spent on projects like this could go toward feeding the hungry or some other (admittedly) noble thing. Well, you might argue that NASA is (indirectly) feeding the hungry by giving millions of dollars of contract work to companies.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
Olivine is not found in magmas that are forming at shallow depths which tend to be rich in silica. Moreover, olivine rich magma intruding into the Crust will react with aluminium, silica and alkali metals and change their composition.
So if you find olivine you know the originating magma is coming from deep down and hasn't hung around in the Crust for very long.
Olivine is not terribly stable under wet conditions. Olivine reacts with water to form clays and iron oxide. The results also imply that the olivine bearing rocks have not been heated in the presence of water (such as you would find in the formation of a mountain range), since olivine reacts at high temperatures in the presence of water to form serpentinite and magnetite.
Therefore in the time since rocks were crystallised they haven't been in the presence of water.
Best wishes,
Mike.