NASA Says Mars Once "Drenched With Water"

NASA is currently holding a press conference (carried live on NASA TV) where they are discussing findings from the Mars rovers. They are saying that the crater that the second rover has landed in has convincing evidence that it was once drenched or covered in liquid water. They cite the tiny spherules, odd holes in the rocks, sulfur in the spectrometric analyses, and evidence of an iron sulfate hydrate (a hydrate is a chemical compound which includes water molecules in the crystal lattice). Update: 03/02 19:45 GMT by M : CNN has a story, or see the NASA press release.

Comments

Key point

[Mukaikubo]

If these rocks are sedimentary, then, as Squyres said, that has to be our main target for a sample return mission. Because sedimentary rocks are going to have fossils.

Re:Key point

[Anonymous Coward]

> sedimentary rocks are going to have fossils. ... and fossils means fuel, which in turn means they must have WMDs.

Re:Key point

[Madcapjack]

>Very true. If there was life in this 'ocean', then >it's very likely fossils are in sedimentary rocks >in that region. If there are no fossils? Absence of >evidence is not evidence of absence, but it'll be a >really curious coincidence.

I'm not sure how much of a fossil bacteria-like creatures would leave behind. There might have been life, but still be no discernible fossils (even assuming that fossils would have been preserved). Chemical signature would be more likely method of identification. Then again, we might find fossils and not even recognize them! Life need not be organic. For example, A.G. Cairns-Smith's book "Genetic Takeover and the mineral origins of life" argues that the first forms of life on earth were colloidal clay organisms without organic chemistry. If Cairns-Smith is correct, then perhaps we should be looking for something like that on Mars instead.

Re:Key point

[avgjoe62]

We're still working on Earth.

Actually, according to this Penatgon report we've already finished here...

Re:Key point

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has never lost a human in the sun, therefore a 1.5 year mission to the surface of the sun is perfectly safe as well.

Re:Key point

[ThisIsAnExampleAccou]

Not if you go at night.

Re:Key point

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be highly variable. In a limestone or chert composed entirely of macroscopic or microscopic shells, it would be nearly 100% fossils -- the rock is *made* of biological remains. These deposits can comprise cubic kilometres of rock over vast areas on Earth. In other sedimentary rocks, fossil content would be lower, or almost zero (e.g., wind-deposited sands are pretty poor). Fossil content is highly variable, and depends upon the geological environment at the surface, the age (e.g., Phanerozoic is much richer in fossils than the Precambrian), and biological factors, as well as the scale of the observations (macroscopic versus microscopic). It also depends greatly on the compositions in the original organism -- did it produce a mineral shell, did it have tough organic material that preserves easily (e.g., spores and pollen)? Hell, there are cases where fossils are known from igneous rocks (e.g., trees encased in lava flows) and plenty of metamorphic rocks too (e.g., just about any fossiliferous sedimentary rock can be metamorphosed to a degree before the fossils are destroyed). Bacterial fossils can occur just about anywhere that suitable mineralization is simultaneously occurring, but they can be tricky to distinguish from non-biological processes (even on Earth, where we *know* there is/was life). Some biological molecules are also recognizable ("biomarkers"), even if the body of the organism is not preserved.

So, I don't have a good answer for, but based on intuition, I would guess between 1 to 10% on average for Earth. There are vast areas, however, where you could drive for miles and find 100%, or 0%. Because the distribution is so variable, and we can only speculate on the range of likely environments and rock types on Mars, this would not be much of a guideline.

One thing is for certain, though -- it would take more than a couple of good rovers to eliminate the possibility for Mars.

Re:Key point

[meiocyte]

This is a nice illustration of the logical fallacy of "begging the question", or circular logic.

Your first premise, "I am having thought", assumes the very thing you're trying to prove, namely that "I" exists. You have no right to use "I" in your premises if what you're trying to prove is that "I" exists. So nothing has been proven here.

So much...

[i.r.id10t]

... for CowboyNeil saving money on his auto insurance...

Not very surprising

[Z00L00K]

That there once has been water on Mars, considering that a lot of comets contains water.

Geek planet alright

[AndroidCat]

So Mars haven't taken a bath or shower in ages. No wonder they're finding crusty salt brine residue.

"...and then...

[mark0]

"... the lense on the camera got really fogged up. That's when we really got suspicious."

the full article from nasa.gov

[therealcaf]

can be found here

You spend $100 billion...

[Ga_101]

To equip 2 Rovers with the best water detecting equipment known to man and how do you find water?

You get mud stuck to the tyres!

But in all seriosness, Good on NASA.
But it certainly makes a more life seeking mission like beagle 2 all the more important.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[FreemanPatrickHenry]

Well here goes my karma...

How can any religion survive that revelation? ...because no religion is dependent upon the earth being the only planet with life on it?

Re:Where did it go?

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

Yes, floats off into space, or turns into ice. There is very little atmosphere, so there is some speculation that the water is in liquid form under the Mars surface somewhere, and it eventually gets pushed up to the surface where it instantly evaporates into water vapor. The thin atmosphere sends this water vapor off into space, or it eventually collects at the two polar ice caps.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[23skiddoo]

Even though I am an atheist, I must disagree with what you say. The revelation only refutes a portion of the Judeo-Christian(-Muslim?) tradition of the creationism story (which could easily and eventually be modified and bent to the new evidence). But in terms of philosphies, especially in regards to how we treat one another and our surroundings, abundant life in the universe is a non-issue. Other religions like Buddhism aren't touched by the news either.

My $0.02...

A la Steve Jobs

[gfilion]

and at the end of the conference, they'll pretend that it's over and say:
and one more thing... we found life on Mars!

Fixing Opportunity after the fact

[Danathar]

Interesting...That means we could possibly come back with a another rover that not only could look for life, but could possibly "repair/rejuvinate" the current rover by 'sweeping" the dust off of the solar panels? I would imagine just leaving the rover would be interesting to engineers and scientists to see what happens to a man made object that sits out in the open for extended periods of time....good information if you want to build stuff on Mars.

Anybody out there like to comment? Is it a possibility? Could we come back with another rover and get Opportunity working again after it runs out of juice?

Re:Fixing Opportunity after the fact

[SB9876]

Unlikely, the uncertainties of the atmospheric entry result in a landing footprint that's (IIRC) a few thousand square miles. The chances that we could get a new rover down within driving range of an existing rover is pretty small. By the time we've got rovers capable of driving those sorts of distances or landings that are accurate enough to make that plan practical, I think that we'd have enough experience that there wouldn't be much to be gained from going back and looking at the old rovers.

Re:Fixing Opportunity after the fact

[AKAImBatman]

Anybody out there like to comment? Is it a possibility? Could we come back with another rover and get Opportunity working again after it runs out of juice?

Opportunity's batteries will be dead (as in won't charge) inside a year of landing. Since the little guy can't rove without a stored supply of juice, he'll be as good as dead. That's actually one reason why scientists had wanted to use an RTG on the mission. An RTG could have kept it running for years, and in fact would have been one of the LAST components to kick the bucket. Sadly, NASA doesn't want another PR problem like with the Cassini probe.

Re:Fixing Opportunity after the fact

[visgoth]

The next rover should drop solar panels in favor of a much more robust power source. I recommend somthing based on harnessing the heat of decaying heavy elements*.

*Nuclear power (oooh the scary word!)

Re:Fixing Opportunity after the fact

[caffiend666]

If there was already an appropriate rover on the way, yes.

The death of the rovers will likely be slow and gradual. First a camera goes, then the arm, then it doesn't have power to move, then the batteries die, not having enough heat to keep the rover warm at night, the one or two functional devices left only operate during daying hours. Then, eventually, they can only ping the things. And, then everything goes quiet.

Once the batteries fail, many other components will fail due to lack of heating during night and thermal cycles.

Decades from now, we might still be getting signals from the rovers. The orbiters from viking lasted over a decade. One of the russian lunar rovers operated for 10 months. I would hate to think we can't surpass what the Soviets pulled off 30 years ago.

The last successful rover lasted several times longer than it was expected to, in fact the rover outlasted the lander that served as a transmitter and a relay station. Upon death of the lander the Soujourner probe was to try to return to the lander. I wondered how long that thing circled the lander, if it if got back at all.... Part of the reason these rovers are all in one units, capable of communicating with earth (at low baud) on their own, was because the last rover outlasted the lander.

In the two weeks Spirit was useless a few weeks ago, they were afraid components would fail. Now, try to imagine the years it takes to design/launch/wait on/land rovers? What would keep working? One of NASA's pre-Bush-Space-Initiative goals was to build a robot colony on mars. These rovers are not the start though.

I for one, would like to see them relaunch at least one rover similar to these in the next launch window. They are (were) planning on relaunching the polar lander. And, it would be nice if the next gen non-nuclear rovers could dust themselves, think $20 wiper blades.

Sulphates and Amino Acids

[aacool]

Of the elements known to exist in the body, some, possibly all, are necessary to life. They are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, potassium, sodium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, magnesium, lithium, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, iodine, barium, silicon.

Also, Methionine is an essential amino acid that is not synthesized by the body and must be obtained from food. It is one of the "sulphur-containing" amino acids and is important in many body functions.

It is likely that sulphur, coupled with the different ferrous hydrides can produce viable conditions for life.

Re:So what?

[stratjakt]

The common knowledge was that the ice caps are carbon dioxide ice - dry ice.

New info

[DarkHand]

The conference is going on now and theres new news: Not only was there a large amount of water, there's good evidence that it was salty.

NASA Press Release

[athorshak]

No link in the article. Here is the press release: NASA Press Release

Re:WTF?

[Ironix]

Actually that is not entirely true...

St. Augustine, back in the day, posited that if there are other planets with life on them, Jesus would have had to visit them all in order to "save" them.

If Jesus did in fact do this, it would remove the uniqueness of Jesus. Since the bible states that Jesus' is unique, this could not have happened.

Thus he surmised that there is no life on other planets.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[Azog]

Why would most religions care?

Christians (at least _informed_ Christians, yes there are some) in particular, would not be disturbed to find that God had created life in more than one place. Why shouldn't He? It's not like the Bible says somewhere in it "Oh, and by the way... this planet is the only one with life on it."

C.S. Lewis discussed the subject fairly completely in an essay decades ago. In case you don't know, he was a famous and very influential Christian author, as well as writing some science fiction and fantasy. Besides writing a non-fiction essay about it, you could view his "Space Trilogy" fiction as an examination of the life-on-other-planets issue with a Christian background.

The more interesting question (also discussed by C.S. Lewis and many others) is how different religions would react to the discovery of _intelligent_ life somewhere else in the universe.

Microbes on Mars... scientifically, that's amazing. From a religious point of view... well, it's "just" another example of a Creator God at work.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[General Alcazar]

Religion can be a lot of things besides explaining our physical reality. In my humble opinion, one of the major issues it struggles with is, what is the meaning of our existence.

Of course, I understand your criticism, which is, I think, directed mostly at dogmatic adherence to ancient traditions without questioning them. However, religion will survive, I am sure. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Science is concerned with one aspect of our reality - the quantifiable, and predictable. Religion is concerned with all those things that you cannot quantify - love, anger, thought, the experience of death, wonder, awe, consciousness. They are both parts of our reality, and neither can be used to explain everything.

Checking the "Big Bend" rock

[drmike0099]

They mentioned that they are going to go check the nearby rock outcropping named "Big Bend" and do basically the same that they did on this rock, in order to see if these rocks were laid down there. I think they're checking exactly that, i.e. whether or not this whole area is laid down with rocks of the same origin (soaked in water), or if they were thrown here by a collision or something.

They said that they weren't sure if the rocks were sedimentary or not. From the sounds of it they aren't, but they did happen to be "soaked in water" or whatever the quote was, allowing the concretions to form in spaces in already existing rock. They haven't found any evidence of layering yet, as far as I know, which would mean sedimentary.

Re:Where did it go?

[xeaxes]

Rent the movie Spaceballs. It explains how to move water and other features from one planet to another.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[System.out.println()]

Do you honestly expect every single thing God created to be written down?
And Sirius begat M-551, and M-551 begat Polaris, and....
Someone's going to say "Life elsewhere would be pretty important."
Sure, to you. Probably not so interesting to most people living 4000+ years ago, who would have been quite shocked to discover that there was more than one continent, or that the world was round.

Re:Finally.. an end to religion

[RobertB-DC]

As far as Christianity is concerned, where in the Bible does it say life only exists / was created on earth?

Excellent point. I think my fundamentalist brethren tend to forget that when God came to Moses, he wasn't dealing with a Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking -- or even a Galileo. He was dealing with a guy whose claim to fame was running away from a life of luxury to tend sheep. At the best, Moses' idea of the universe might have dealt with Egyptian gods, and a universe whose origin was a direct result of some rather kinky onanism.

God came to Moses in a way Moses could understand, in a way that his fellow shepherds and stonemasons could understand.

Imagine Moses up on the mountain, getting the first four books of what we now call the Old Testament from the Almighty:

Moses: So, where did we come from?

God: Well, I started with a singularity. Pretty much an undifferentiated soup of degenerate nucleons at first, but a little stir here and there produced some dense spots. Of course, it was just a few million years until the nucleons were able to condense into fermions, and then baryons...

Moses: tilt!

God: Oh, just tell 'em that the world was created from the void.

Moses: How long did it take to create the world?

God: Well, it took a few billion years to... oh, never mind, let's call it "seven days".

A bit cheeky, but the point is: God comes to us in a way we can understand. That's different for an illiterate goat breeder in 2000 BC than it is for a nuclear physicist in 2000 AD. Whether you choose to believe doesn't have as much to do with how God appears as it does with your own faith.

Re:Fossil fuels?

[taped2thedesk]

This would be great news for the space program, as Bush would make the invasion and conquest of Mars a national priority.

That's the liberation of Mars, you insensitive clod!

Re:Where did it go?

[mackinaugh]

Actually, I watched this documentary once with Arnold Schwarzenegger where they showed where all the water is. It's in giant ice blocks in this huge cave. There's also an alien device designed to release it as vapor, thereby creating an atmosphere on Mars.

I Was Hoping

[jazman_777]

they had found some Spice.

Also: harsh radiation splits apart water

[morton2002]

Mars has a very weak magnetic field since we speculate that its core has mostly cooled. This means that the planet is poorly protected from harsh solar and cosmic radiation, which is strong enough to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. These atoms would indeed just float off into space, since the gravatational pull of the planet is not strong enough to retain such light atoms.

That's why I'm not holding out much hope for terraforming Mars. But that doesn't mean we can't still live on it, just in protected chambers on the surface.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The common knowledge was that the ice caps are carbon dioxide ice - dry ice.

This is 5, Informative in a sneaky small print kinda way. Yes, common knowledge was that the caps are carbon dioxide.

Today common knowledge is that the ice caps are a mix of CO_2 and water. In the last couple years, there has been mounting evidence that it is actually mostly water ice, with some CO2.

Google mars polar caps if you don't beleive me.

Posted anonymously 'cause most moderators today wouldn't notice anyways.

Magnetite signature for bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

One signature may be small magnetite crystals. One the controversies with the "fossils" in the martian meteorite was how to be sure they were really fossils. The argument pretty much devolved into two lines of reasoning when it was reduced to the simplest form. The objects pro) looked like fossils, but con) they were far, far smaller than expected from comparable earthly forms, but pro) contained magnetite (hematite) in a form that ONLY occurs in lifeforms on earth, but con) they came from Mars, which totals up to "no one has the vote." Interestingly, hematite was one of the attractions of the Opportunity landing site.

Re:Get off the cross

[parcel]

The ISS and Mars have the forest. Hubble needs a tree.

The cost so far for this most recent mars mission is over $800 million. Budgeting through further missions is set to exceed $15 billion. The ISS outdoes even this, with an expected cost of near $30 billion to finish the station, and estimated operating costs of $1.5 billion a year once completed.

Hubble needs about $100 million for a single shuttle launch. $200 million in equipment has already been constructed and is only waiting in a warehouse for a mission.

I don't deny the importance of the ISS and Mars missions. All these projects have significant importance for science, technology, and society as a whole. Hubble is about far more than "getting to see a black hole". We have made dramatic advances in astrophysics with the help of the telescope. We have gained immense insight into the depths of our universe, to an extent that won't be possible again for a very long time.

Taking relative cost of the three projects into account, Hubble is by leaps and bounds the most effective. Do the math. Fixing the hubble will only take 0.2% of the cost of the ISS and Mars missions. Given the advances in science and technology we have extracted from Hubble, the return on this small investment is tremendous.

That's why I sigh.

What I want to know is ...

[AftanGustur]

What was that Rabbit thing. opportunity photographed on Mars and why did Nasa destroy it ??