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Curiosity Finds Volcanic Soils
Zothecula writes "NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has completed its first soil analysis of the Red Planet. The unmanned explorer used an advanced, miniaturized X-ray diffraction instrument that is part of the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) of its internal laboratory. The soil, collected at a site designated 'Rocknest' in Gale Crater, reveals that Martian soil is a weathered volcanic type similar to soils found in the Hawaiian Islands."
And, of course, a shot of the area because it looks cool.
I really hope that Curiosity finds a Martian cat one day.
Ezekiel 23:20
Martian soil is a weathered volcanic type similar to soils found in the Hawaiian Islands
Now all it needs is air pressure, oxygen, water, more sunlight, an ozone layer, a magnetic field, arable soil, flora, and fauna--and we can live there no problem!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
A lot of the dirt we see on Earth, is made from decayed plant material, even normal beach (non-volcanic) sand on our beaches are made up of a lot of crustacean shells. Even with some water chances are Mars is lifeless, if there is live it wouldn't be as plentiful. So the soil would be mostly volcanic like.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They are in the commissioning phase for the instruments. They chose to sample this location precisely because it looked like it would be a fairly ordinary volcanic sand. They say in the press release that it's more or less what they were expecting. They weren't expecting big surprises, just confirmation that the instruments do indeed seem to be working.
They will have more interesting sedimentary rocks to sample once they move on to new sites. In fact, some finely-layered, probably sedimentary bedrock outcrop can be seen on the other side of the gully to the northeast of where the rover is now, in the direction they are planning to head next (the telescopic zoom on the mastcams is awesome!). I think the short-term plan is to drill some of those outcrops and run them through the chemical and other analyses. Then they'll probably turn around and head south to look at the main outcrops on the mountain in the middle of Gale Crater, but that's probably a month or two away at least.
They also like nutrients from the soil.
There are none on mars.
You will need to fling large amount of ready-to-use nutrient rich soil along with those plants.
Now you have plants converting nutrients AND carbon dioxide in more nutrients.
Thinking further, I think you need to resurrect one of em dinosaur era plants for trapping carbon dioxide.
Plants did a lot of carbon dioxide trapping in those days.
What, and we should just assume the expectations are correct? It's always better to know for sure. The reaction from the people interviewed seems to be "Yep, pretty much exactly as we expected". That doesn't mean it was a waste of time, that means they can be even more sure that their models and predictions are right. There's no point in basing a later hypothesis on data which you haven't actually proven: you risk spending years of time and huge sums of money barking up the wrong tree.
So we need to fling poo at Mars. Sounds fun. I guess it's time to send monkeys back into space. :-)
Your brain color-adjusts all the time. Back in the film camera days, there was indoor film and outdoor film. If you used outdoor film indoors the colors came out way too warm/yellowish, if you used indoor film outdoors the photo would come out way too blueish/cool. The colors as shown by the film are what the actual colors were, but your brain adapts and changes the colors to "normal".
Free Martian Whores!