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Mars Lander Instrument Waving In the Martian Wind

Posted by timothy on from the more-proof-of-fraud dept.

Matt_dk writes "This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars. On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be 'out-of-phase' with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence."

2 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Pardon the tangent..... by Anachragnome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a carryover from a previous topic regarding the smell of space, I wonder if NASA is trying to determine the smell of the martian atmosphere.

    While we have no humans in place to do the smelling, could samples be taken then sent back for "smell" analysis?

    Previous topic( http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/16/1533239 )already touched on the importance of the smell of space, but what about Mars?

    The fact that there is mass pushing that little flag around leads me to believe that there are also chemical components to provide smell "signatures".

    1. Re:Pardon the tangent..... by thepotoo · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Atmosphere on Mars is 95% CO2, 3% N, 1.6% Ar + trace. I'd guess you can't smell the Ar (you can't smell .9% Ar on earth), and you can't smell Nitrogen, so that pretty much leaves us with the strongly acidic smell of CO2.

      This is all based on conjecture, so things may changes in local areas, during various weather conditions, or if/when we get more accurate measurements from the surface.

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