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Opportunity Spots Curious Object On Mars
EhobaX writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has come across an interesting object -- perhaps a meteorite sitting out in the open at Meridiani Planum. Initial data taken by the robot's Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) is suggestive that the odd-looking "rock" is made of metal."
So that is what happened to the Beagle lander! They finally found it.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I still prefer a cute bunny over metal robot.
To make a good sci-fi story though, Opportunity might have just reached its expiry date and that'll keep everybody in suspense for a long time.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
it's a space station!
All that's left after the martian holocaust...
Wait -- I've seen this movie! DON'T GO LOOK AT IT!
If we tell GWB it's a WMD, maybe we'll finally get a real space program...
Jimmy Hoffa has been found...
Be careful with the abrasion tool or there could be an earth-shattering kaboom.
I would think that a meteorite would've been buried in the sand instead of sitting on top of it...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't...what about the other 8?
I always wondered what happened to it.
-- I discovered this SIG in the lost and found department.
OK, so speculation is that it's a meteorite - OK, but this was found on a large plain.. what are the odds that a meteor could hit a planet and not leave a crater? Wouldn't the gravity of Mars cause it to increase velocity?
Anyone with more knowledge of meteor physics than me have an explanation?
Project leader Kenobi: it's not a rock. It's a space station
Data Analyst Rimmer: Aliens!
Computer Programmer Neo: Woaaah
Charateristic topology, metal composition, scorched surroundings; clearly Mars is giving birth.
My guess is that it will turn out to be This.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's the Monolith. Taa... taa... taaa...... TATAAAA!!!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
it's a Starbucks. They really ARE everywhere.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
I stress that this is very preliminary!
:)
Did this guy think that by saying that he would somehow prevent half of the internet preparing some crackpot theory within 5 seconds of reading it?
Personally, I'll wait before jumping to conclusions, and look forward to reading the followup!
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
This is a big deal. You don't find raw metal much on Mars; most of it is tied up with oxygen. Raw metal has many implications: if it is common, it can be a great source of base building. If the metals are rare on Earth as well, and they're common on Mars, they could provide a potential export source. If it is a meteor, and they're common, it could affect our models of how often Mars gets struck by meteors. Since the rock isn't buried, it could provide clues as to how long it's been on Mars, how fast Meridiani Planum is eroding, and give us dataon how metals wear over time on Mars.
Any time you find something you've never found before, it's a big deal. Honestly, to people who've been following the mission, it looked like Opportunity was pretty much wrapping things up. It just left a geological treasure trove and there isn't much more "on the map", so to speak. It's neat to see it continue making nice finds.
We're practicing our labials.
So the NASA team has been poking around the planet for more than a(n Earth) year, right? Most of the surprises happened months ago... now it's just a matter of finding something to do until the batteries quit holding their charge. Looking at the heat shield doesn't seem like a very revealing bit of science -- more of a "gee look how far we've come" sort of cool thing.
Then they get a picture of a big freaking rock with a bunch of wierd holes, sitting there in the middle of a windblown plain. Not covered in dust like everything else... even the wind patterns in the dust around it look new.
What do you think the first guy to get that picture said when he looked, and then looked again, and realized that this wasn't going to be just another day on Mars?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I should also add that raw metal is very easy to mine. In fact, one proposal for lunar construction involves simply shipping up magnets and a machine that churns up regolith, since a small but significant percentage of lunar regolith is pure iron in powder form. Pure iron powder allows for powder metallurgy - while it's not quite as strong as cast iron (not that you need such strength on the moon), you can make almost any shape with it, with a high degree of detail, safety, low energy input, simple tools, and good speed.
We're practicing our labials.
For those of you who don't know what TES (Thermal Emission Spectrometer) is, here is some more information. The webpage is quite interesting.
But what is this, that is next to the rock?
Is it the heat shield?
The best part of the story is it seems that both the rovers will be continuing on for quite some time. Talk about a huge vat of gravy for this mission. It's really nice to see our taxpayer dollars repaid so handsomely.
With the initial "water" find complete, these little critters are free to give us so much more information about Mars than we could have gotten with 50 Viking probes or any manner of orbiting system.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
it's a Martian coprolite! Now we can tell what they ate!
Maybe the rock did leave a crater in the sand millions of years ago, and the crater got blown away by the wind, leaving the heavy rock sitting there.
Things can sit on the surface forever there. It's not like there's anyone there to say "ooh, this is shiny!" and disturb it. That's a human thing... (although now that human scientists sent a rover to Mars, they're saying "ooh, that rock is shiny!" and disturbing it)
If it's not the Beagle, it might be the Mars Climate Orbiter
If you tamper with it, you'll unleash demons from hell!!!!!!!
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
It's a Horta.
Maybe it's a gold nugget! And the race is on. Exploration in 2010, settlement in 2020, mining in 2030, colonization in 2040, terraforming in 2050 .... (although a source of liquid water would be more valuable kilo for kilo than gold).
"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
This object is not very far from other debris from the re-entry. It could very well turn out to be a chunk of something that got a bit melty on the way in.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Interesting find, but what's up with that caption?
It's a Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator of course.
Heck it's even on the right planet
That's not that interesting looking - like most of the rest of Mars we've seen - except to planetologists. I find it interesting that the surface of Mars is so boring. That's because all the action is below the surface, where Mars is teeming with vampires . Once Opportunity takes the bait of probing that rock, setting off the alarms, the thin Martian air will be filled with flapping batwings. Our wisdom in sending a bloodless probe will pay off, as we'll have drawn them out into the rays of the sun, where our robot minions are a match for the weakened biters. I'll be playing the SOLASER across the face of the Red Planet this week, amplifying the beneficent rays of the Sun perhaps enough to make a difference. That is, if the vampire-controlled FAA doesn't stop me with their "laser-warning system" they've bankrolled on trumped-up terror propaganda.
--
make install -not war
Even without water, it doesn't have to create a crater. It is quite small, such an object might not create a crater if it fell down at a shallow angle or low speed trajectory. Also probably it fell down billions of years ago, not last week. The crater might have eroded away, if it was too shallow (the rock looks approx. fist sized), it wouldn't have created a crater.
What a great time to be alive! I'm happy that my tax dollars are funding this stuff.
The "object" is on the surface within a few meters of the heat shield. It's like nothing else the rovers have seen on Mars in over a year. I'd bet on Terrestrial origin. A "melty" chunk of the shield sounds about right. The surface pattern even resembles some of the texture of the shield material.
"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
Um... Mars has an atmosphere. Just because its not very thick, doesn't mean its not going to have an effect on meteorites.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that we get more data our of rovers than we do orbiters. Certainly a rover can give us very detailed data of a given area, but our knowledge of the regional and global characteristics of Mars come courtesy of our orbiter missions. The very landing sites picked were selected because of the data from these orbiters. Most of the rover data is relayed by the relay systems on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. I would say that rovers and orbiters complement each other nicely.
Keep in mind that we've been roving on our planet since before the beginning of history, but we still get a lot of useful information out of orbiters around our world (Landsat, GOES, etc.), too.
I know its NASA and I know they wouldn't play tricks on us, but... it looks like it's a bad photoshop job. Anyone else with that impression?
Look ! Look at the shiny rock. In the meantime the Martians will be sneaking away behind them.
the blob seems to be about the thickness of a good skipping stone, while the aeroshell is mostly honeycombed aluminum or titanium, made of metal sheets much the same thickness as a soda can.
If enough Titanium melted from the aeroshell to make that one blob, it wouldn't be the only blob, and we wouldn't have enough rover left to take its picture.
The rock is embedded in the dune such as to suggest wind has had time to blow the sand around it. Other evidence suggests that the various sand ripples you see haven't moved much in thousands of years. The grains in the surface crust are somewhat cemented together, and the thin Martain wind has a hell of a time moving a grain of sand, much less make an impression on the crust over the course of a year.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Well, isn't everything on Mars something we've never found before? And how much of Mars is left?
It may be a big deal to planetary people, but to the General Public it's just more banality dressed up as something exciting.
Call when something interesting happens, like they figured out how the solar cells got cleaned off somehow and are generating more power.
Conversation with science student friend of mine: HIM: " . . . and that is what we hope to learn from my project." ME: "I don't understand." HIM: "Exactly."
--
"You've only got one finger left,
and it's pointing at the door."