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New Mars Discoveries

Posted by samzenpus on from the the-land-beneath-the-land dept.

sighted writes "The fleet of five active spacecraft examining Mars (in addition to the recently-missing Mars Global Surveyor) have been working overtime. On the heels of last week's finding of possible flows of liquid water, the ESA has announced that an entire hidden landscape exists just beneath the surface of the Red Planet, and NASA has released some really amazing images of layered topography that will yield many clues to the history of this strange world."

18 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. I won't believe it until confirmed by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 4, Funny

    K'Breel, Speaker for the Council must give his judgement upon this matter.

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    liqbase :: faster than paper
    1. Re:I won't believe it until confirmed by bobcat7677 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Please allow K'Breel some time to provide a response. The esteemed speaker is very busy right now overseeing the analysis of the recently captured "Global Surveyor" human craft.

  2. I bet it's caramel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Mmmmm...

  3. Awesome! by Kiba+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All the more reasons to spend money on NASA.

    We need to spend money on NASA. NASA's pioneering work in the space race give us advances in technology. The exploration of Mars should be taken seriously to the extent of the level of Iraq war spending.

    NASA is a legendary organization during the space race. We need to make NASA a legendary level government organization again.

    We have very good reason to go to Mars. Discovering lifeform on another planet is very improtant. Even if it is bacteria life, it will be a still very important step to answering mankind's question "Are we alone?". Even if we don't discover life, we will advance the technological level of mankind by doing so.

    --
    Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-RMS
    1. Re:Awesome! by Nasarius · · Score: 4, Informative

      Uh, no.

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
    2. Re:Awesome! by Mixel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I thought that was the moon race; Russians won the Space race...

    3. Re:Awesome! by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How convenient that the country that first got to the Moon also got to define that as the finishing post. Russia put the first satellite, the first living creature, the first man and the first woman in space, and I think it was a Russian cosmonaut that performed the first EVA, although I could be wrong on that one (and don't have time to google it). They were also the first to put an object on the Moon.

      I don't mean to belittle NASA's achievements, but to simply say "The US won the space race" is disingenuous.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  4. Odd pictures... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Didn't one of those new pictures show a space marine waving a soul cube on the surface?

  5. Surprising! by Klowner · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hidden underground tunnels on mars eh? We need chainsaws, posthaste!

    And the "hidden tunnel" link in the article didn't point to doom 3 screenshots, slashdot impresses yet again.

    1. Re:Surprising! by GreatRedShark · · Score: 3, Funny

      Quick! Somebody call the Rock! I'm sure HE can handle this!

    2. Re:Surprising! by malsdavis · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...he just doesn't remember!

  6. White dolphins discovered in Hellas Basin! by StefanJ · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. Not really. They're gone forever, starved to death and poisoned by pollution.

    But maybe someday after Mars is terraformed* we'll have genetically engineered recreations that have the manufacturer's logo blazed on their flanks who swim along boats and squeak helpful shopping tips at the tourists.

    Stefan

    * By Halliburton, so bring a respirator.

    1. Re:White dolphins discovered in Hellas Basin! by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You do realize that it's corporations (Boeing, Lockheed, Orbital, etc) who do the bulk of spacecraft design, development, and operation in the US, right? And, for most rockets (obvious exception, the shuttle, which really should have been treated as a research platform, not a workhorse), these corporations have the normal profit motive, as they bear operating costs and compete for launch constracts. Often only the design is subsidized. Sometimes, as in the case of the Pegasus, even the design isn't subsidized.

      It's funny, people viewing corporations as the answer to high launch costs, when it's corporations that currently run the show.

      If what people actually mean is "smaller startups", they should read about the staggering non-success smaller startups have historically had with rocketry.

      That doesn't mean that the business world won't give us "the way forward". SeaLaunch hasn't done half-bad, and I keep an eager eye toward the progress of SpaceX's Falcon. But this isn't "something new". It's just the latest iteration of a long, ongoing process.

      --
      If a tree falls in the forest and no engineer observes it, does it have a drag coefficient?
  7. Most of this isn't new... by CorSci81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The idea that the northern hemisphere craters were simply buried is actually a fairly old idea, even though the article makes this sound like a major breakthrough. We've had some radar images suggesting this for some time, I guess it's just now they're starting to get some press. The layered deposits are also well documented, but I do have to admit those are the prettiest pictures I've ever seen of them.

  8. Re:I didn't know satellites had a schedual by sighted · · Score: 4, Informative

    I tossed off that phrase maybe a little too casually as a figure of speech, but certainly the people on the project have been working overtime. Some background here.

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    Saddle up: Riding with Robots
  9. just think by netsfr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how mind blowing it would have been if the sub-surface radar showed roads or infrastructure of a previous existance... It would have turned the way funding is for space all around, as well as change text books all over the world.

    Really impressive technology being used here. Kudos to those who make it happen.

  10. Re:overtime pay for robot workers? by Cherita+Chen · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "spacecraft and robotic devices and test instruments do not have a workday, and are not limited by human weaknesses like the need for sleep, food, and bowel movements."

    Not quite true. They need to eat, sleep and shit - just not in the "biological" fashion that we carbon based life-forms do.

    It is well known that;
    A.) The Mars rovers are often limited in the amount of work they can perform due to light availability (food).
    B.) The rovers must also transmit data back to the earth (shit).
    C.) When power is limited due to lack of light, they must cease all science operations (sleep).

    I would say that both of these rovers do in fact have a workday, and that it is much harder than most of the folks here on Earth would care to imagine...

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    I'm not fat, just big boned...
  11. Interesting discovery... by skelly33 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Neat - It makes me wonder how it could have been covered up so well. Letting my imagination run wild... what if Olympus Mons let loose a cataclysmic eruption so powerful that it:

    1) put enough sediment into the atmosphere to cover the entire surface,
    2) put larger rocks into orbit which eventually decayed and came back down to form the rock-strewn surface we are accustomed to seeing, possibly forming some of the ounger crater impact sites, and
    3) blocked out sunlight, killing off any shred of life on the planet at the time of the event

    "How" this could come to pass is the first thing that pops into my mind - no speculation in the article though which I always enjoy hearing from NASA.