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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.
Europe can be proud of this mission: Mars Express is an enormous success for the European Space Programme.
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..."
...we're all still waiting for confirmation of bacteria and/or bacteria fossils. I certainly hope that NASA can establish good contact with Spirit again soon, and that Opportunity lands safely tomorrow!
libertarianswag.com
Correct me if im wrong but didnt we already know there was frozen Water in mars? Isn't what we're looking for liquid water or the indication that there was once liquid water? Is this frozen water in a melted state somewhere else in the planet ..that would be interesting?
[alk]
Now I only need to ship out hop plants to set up my Martian Brewery!
Worst
When he saw the water channels on Mars, later confirmed by the orbiters.
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?
As a scientist, although I find it very interesting that they have "discovered" water on Mars, I do no think it is the ground breaking discovery that it has been played up as.
:-)
From the geological appearance water was always expected, Hydrogen and Oxygen are both abundant enough (in the early history of Mars - not in the atmosphere at the moment). H2O is the thermodynamic result.
Although the absence of water would almost certainly have procluded the existance of "life" on Mars, the existance of water is not, in itself, that startling a discovery.
It is important that scientific funding goes towards real science and not satisfying the public demand for fantastic revelations!
Finally, well done ESA for building a spectrometer that accurate, and getting it 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...
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Looks like some telemetry was just received from Spirit:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/30.cfm
You know as of late it seems to me that NASA is just feeding us every little finding in morsel form. It feels like we are being baited with a carrot. This whole "we found water" thing is no exception. We go from hearing next to nothing to now hearing something "new" just about everyday. I understand they are grasping to get the American public "excited" once more about space exploration, but still. Water does not excite me.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
is here: It still doesn't seem to be fully operational.
Does anyone have a comprehensive list of what the rovers are designed to deal with?
It may be time to return to a soft landing strategy.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Moderation: -0.66 Mildly Off-Topic
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
They just need to stay away from the STOP+A keys
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Good News for NASA, Bad news for Brits. NASA had 20 minutes of connection at 120b/s with spirit.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
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!
I work in the oilfield operating a 2 tons monstrosity called an MWD. These things are used to transmit data from up to a 10 km deep hole and on the basis of this data the decision of which way to drill a well are made (oil wells are usually not vertical affairs these days). Multi-million dollar decisions are regularly made on a data from a transfer rate of less than 10 bps, 6 bps is excellent and transmission rates are often in the range of 0.5-3 bits per second. You would be surprised at how much system information can be crammed into that bandwidth if the programmers are clever. Incidentally, my tools use a modulation/demodulation scheme similar to that used on the Voyager probes, we just have to transmit through viscous mud with pressure instead of light across the solar system.
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
This stuff's mixed with frozen C02
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
Spirit Rover is back on track again.
Free XBox, PS2
check out the Mars Express photo featured at the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3422841. stm
looks like there's a sinkhole... and where there are sinkholes, there are....? CAVERNS!
Let the terraforming begin!
You may be joking but I think it's a good idea. I think the odds of finding life on mars is slim to nil. Right now they are fruitlessly running around hoping to find past traces of life.
Terraforming will be a long long process. I say we jump start it by tossing out some extremophile microbes and see what takes root. Scatter them around the water laden edges of the poles. Anything that produces organic compounds has got to be better than what Mars has now.
At this point we have some clue as to what kind of compounds and weather conditions exist on Mars. Let's set up some test beds here, genetically reengineer existing extremophiles and see if we can get something that grows.
i mean...I know they got limited bandwidth and all, but what sort of protocol do they use?
good lord, this is an incredibly geeky question, but I'm serious, i wanna know.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
It's kind of sad really all these nerds who pretty much owe their lives, livelihoods and amusement to advanced technology constantly pooh poohing this great science going on.
Ah well - the confluence of indifference, stupidity and radical Libertarian 'prices of everything'.
See If NASA promised that Mars science would guarantee the slashnerds could share illegal music for free forever I'm pretty sure those damn Trekkie buffoons could get behind it.
Live long and eat Cheetos, fat goofy weird comicbook store guy.
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.
You must be from Japan ?s pacecraft/ tworovers_br.html
If the rover is the size of compact car, it is very compact !
Here are both the current rover and the previous one in the same picture:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/
One seat could barely fit.
That's why you're not an engineer for NASA. You worry about the little things or you stand on the sideline and watch.
Easy, Martian atmosphere pressure is only 1% that of Earth's. So whilst the winds on Mars can reach enormous speeds, they actually exert very little force.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Would the recent solar eruption have anything to do with Spirit's shutdown? No matter the data speed involved in the transmission, a solar flare and multiple sunspots would generate quite a bit of noise. Especially when you take into account that Mars doesn't have much of, if any magnetosphere to deflect ionizing particles.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
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...
That's more good news then. :-)
:-/
:-D
Let's just hope the good news in it transmitting telemetry data doesn't mean bad news in what the telemetry data shows.
Regardless what, I'm starting to get ready for the Opportunity landing party to be held at #maestro on irc.freenode.net
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Updated Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status January 23, 2004
The flight team for NASA's Spirit received data from the rover in a communication session that began at 13:26 Universal Time (5:26 a.m. PST) and lasted 20 minutes at a data rate of 120 bits per second.
"The spacecraft sent limted data in a proper response to a ground command, and we're planning for commanding further communication sessions later today," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The flight team at JPL had sent a command to Spirit at 13:02 Universal Time (5:02 PST) via the NASA Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, telling Spirit to begin transmitting.
close enough.
water would boil on mars given the pressure and daily temperatures.
By increasing the digit at then of of this http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/30.cfm, you can get more news.
This one above is somewhat upbeat. The data rate from this last communication went from 10 minutes at 10 bits per second to 20 minutes at 120 bits per second.
Not quite live streaming, but not yet slashdoted either.
Rover dimensions: 1.5 meter (4.9 feet) high by 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) wide by 1.6 meter (5.2 feet) long ( MERfacts
It's closer to the size of a riding lawn mower. It's only the camera mast that makes it tall.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Mars Express has ground-penetrating radar that can read down to 3 miles, so it should see the ice lenses of the cryosphere. We found so much water just from the epithermal neutron counter on Odyssy.
Most spacecraft commands are sent as fixed or variable length frames of synchronous data. A frame usually begins with a sync pattern, some header information, the actual command, and a trailer containing a checksum or CRC. There is no protocol, in the sense that most people use. Think of the commands as UDP datagrams. The engineers in the control center monitor the telemetry downlink to verify that the commands sent were received and decode properly. The spacecraft command decoder has parameters in the telemetry downlink such as "# of good commands received" , "# of commands rejected", and "last command received". For simple commands, like "heater #5 ON", you can check the downlink telemetry for the status of heater #5 and verify that it is in the correct state. For complicated operations, like uploading software or large data tables, the spacecraft can be commanded to do a memory dump to the downlink telemetry, allowing the upload to be verified.
As a general rule, spacecraft command processing is kept as simple as possible. You want the command decoder to be extremely reliable, so that even if half the hardware on the spacecraft is broken, you can still send it commands and have them executed. Rather than rely on an automatic protocol, it is usually better to take advantage of the cleverness of the engineers and computers on the ground. Since there is a human in the loop, take advantage of it. The human knows things that a protocol doesn't, like the spacecraft is about to go "over the hill" due to the motion of the Earth and the spacecraft. The engineer may also want to do things like uplink a sequence of commands into temporary storage, verify them with a dump, and execute them only after he is sure that all of the commands were successfully received and decoded. Some commands are designed to require multiple actions before they do something dangerous and/or irreversible to the spacecraft. For example, "arm pyro #36" and "fire pyro #36", which might deploy a solar panel.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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
Evidence for water activity on Mars comes (I think) mainly from pictures of geological formations: eroded hillsides, gravel bars, river canyons, etc. This is different: evidence of water ice currently in a particular location. Then again I thought that the presence of water ice on Mars was already pretty well established, but what do I know :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Some say we should worry more about incoming asteroids wiping out all life on earth which would mean we should establish human colonies on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere to hedge our bets against such an occurance (could return to repopulate the planet after a time). Others say earth is heading for environmental disaster and the solution might be to leave it for lifeless places and artificial environments where we can do no harm. Others yet want us to think about overpopulation which could be solved by spreading out to other planets and while others say that sociopolitical causes are the main of hunger today, there is a limit to the number of people that can live here.
Why did people come to the New World, not just in Columbus' time but earlier from Asia? Why did they send their canoes to Pacific islands? The time will come that our reasons will match theirs. Today the reasons are not yet there and the will is only shared by a few but the reasons will likely become more apparent and the population more willing with time.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
but it's a GIANT shrimp.
Well, you can go in multiple times and wear a different mustache each time.