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Mars Express Confirms Water on Mars
jki writes "So, finally: Through the initial mapping of the South polar cap on 18 January, OMEGA, the combined camera and infrared spectrometer, has already revealed the presence of water ice and carbon dioxide ice. This information was confirmed by the PFS, a new high-resolution spectrometer of unprecedented accuracy. The first PFS data also show that the carbon oxide distribution is different in the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars. The MaRS instrument, a sophisticated radio transmitter and receiver, emitted a first signal successfully on 21 January that was received on Earth through a 70- metre antenna in Australia after it was reflected and scattered from the surface of Mars. This new measurement technique allows the detection of the chemical composition of the Mars atmosphere, ionosphere and surface." On another note, NASA has gotten some sort of signal from Spirit, but it's still not fully functional.
Let the terraforming begin!
It's just sitting there sulking.
Any chance it can confirm the location of our missing landers?
Sweet, so when do I get my free shrimp?!?
So Spirit tripped and drowned in a puddle of mud?
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Now I only need to ship out hop plants to set up my Martian Brewery!
Worst
10 minutes at 10 bits/s, I wonder what was important enough to spent those bytes on...
;-)
If Nasa-geeks are anything like other geeks, it must've been either martian porn or nethack I guess. The former being more likely.
Karma? What's that again?
... how are they going to get the bottling plant up there?
Scientists confirm that what they've found is mostly water. They were quite surprised to see that the water was held in bags. Quite ugly bags.
They continue to speculate what the discovery might mean, and whether life may be possible in this environment...
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
Wow.. That's a little more than one ascii character per second... I can see the bits coming down now: A...L...I...E...N...A...T...T...A...C...K
NO CARRIER
Last communications between NASA and Spirit....
NASA: MOVE FORWARD 10
SPIRIT: 10? Ok 10 METERS [whir.. Trundle]
NASA: NO NO. 10 FEET!
SPIRIT: OOPS..
NASA: WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?! REQUEST STATUS REPORT!
SPIRIT: LOCATION - OLD RIVERBED
GOOD NEWS - FOUND WATER
BETTER NEWS - LOTS OF WATER
BAD NEWS - NOT WATERPROO...#%$&#..... Bzzzzzzzzzzzt
NASA: DAMN!!!!!!!
Have a nice day!
In breaking news today, NASA's Spirit probe transmitted data confirming the existence of rocks on the red planet. "We're very excited" said Aloisious Smythe Ponsonby-Jones, project manager of the Mars mission's rock-finding department. "Right on this picture, you can see a little redd-ish one, and here another. This one's shaped like an egg, and the second one, if you look carefully, has a little face shape on it."
The mission's dust-detection sub-project, as well as its quest to determine whether Mars is, indeed, reddish-brown colored, are still awaiting further data.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
With this water we can go to Mars. Then were gonna take Deimos, then we're gonna go take Phobos, then we're going over to Mercury to take back the SUN!!!!! Yeaaaaahhhhh!
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
For purposes of Long John Silver's offer, an ocean is defined as a single body of water, the surface area of which equals or exceeds five million square kilometers.
Er... I'm pretty sure they're safe on this one.
Hmph, this is so obvious. Even a child knows, that north is the one that is upwards in your map. Just look at any map of Mars and... Oh, never mind
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Of course, it was probably the Venusian railway network where Elron Hubbard claimed he was almost hit by a train...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
w3 T3h M4rTi4N H4k3r5 h@VE 0wN3r3D Y0uR 5loW R0V3R. W3 WIll 0vErcLOcK 1T anD m4Ke i+ f45tEr. W3 4Re L33+. J00 4R3 L4m3.
NASA can't make any sence of it...
Hrm...perhaps the moderators confused "insightful" and "inciteful" again.
Slashdot has seemingly always had a problem in that department, IMHO.
Sounds like a correct description of the thought-process normally executed by my boss...
Hey, I can see my house from up here!
In contrast, Beagle seems to have used YModem-G and "&Q0". Kiddies.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The press release doesn't even mention the USA or NASA...
You must've not read all the way to the end. I quote the last paragraph:
Mrs Edelgard Bulmahn, German Minister for Research and Education, who is also chair of the ESA Council at Ministerial level, said at the press conference: "Europe can be proud of this mission: Mars Express is an enormous success for the European Space Programme. We rule! In your FACE, NASA! Your rover SUCKS! Who's laughing NOW!"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Caverns? Maybe that's why Bush is so eager to go to Mars. You never know Osama may be hiding in one of them there. He sure can't find him on this planet :)
If only I could come up with a good sig
It's probably not the most efficient way to obtain pretty wallpaper for my 2048x1024 desktop, but it's appreciated none the less.
After analyzing the data, they found Spirit had been infected with the Nachi virus and was sending out spam from Mars. There were also ARP requests mixed in the data stream looking for windowsupdate.com. :-)
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
but it's a GIANT shrimp.
Well, you can go in multiple times and wear a different mustache each time.
You've got MWDs and oil????
Don't tell Bush!
(MWD must mean mass weapons of destruction... scary to think that not only has your company developed nuclear technology, but also developed antimatter)
This only applies if you don't work for Halliburton.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose