Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

What "Earth-Shaking" Discovery Has Curiosity Made on Mars?

Posted by timothy on from the taxpayers-will-die-while-NASA-teases dept.

Randym writes "NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument. The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. 'We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,' says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. 'This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good,' he says."

6 of 544 comments (clear)

  1. Aliens? by Linsaran · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If so, let me be the first to say I welcome our new martian overlords. Just please don't be the wussy kind of martians that die easilyto earth's microbial organisms.

    --
    In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
  2. water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We found something that looks like it could maybe be the remnants of something that would maybe only show up in an environment that had maybe been exposed to water!

     

    1. Re:water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not sure I'd class Mars as either easy to get to or agreeable.

      It's quite a long way away, and a minority of people would like the climate there.

      Lets contrast then.
      Venus: probes dissolve in less than 20 minutes
      Mercury: probe melts before landing
      Jupiter: a whole lot more distant and any probe aimed at the planet itself will face storms larger than all the rocky planets combined
      Saturn: ever more distant, slightly smaller storms than Jupiter
      Uranus: same trend
      Neptune: very far, very cold storms

      And for the classicalists:
      Pluto: tiny rock, very far away, in an awkward 5 or so object mutual orbit arrangement

      for the completionists:
      Ceres: smaller than Pluto, but much closer, completely surrounded by other hazardous rocks
      Quaoar: very far, pretty small
      Sedna: very far, pretty small
      Eris: very far, pretty small
      Haumea: very far, very small
      Makemake: very far, very small

  3. Re:Obviously they are trying to build hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is at least the 10th response related to food. You guys hungry or something?

  4. Earth shattering? by gmuslera · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Should be evidence of life, something not so surprising. But could be even more shattering to find that we are actually martians that come here very long ago escaping from the climate change that we caused on Mars (even that we Marsformed Earth back then).

  5. Re:I really hope... by Dekker3D · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No oxygen to burn it with. The biggest reason coal is so useful on Earth is because it reacts with the ever-abundant oxygen in the air to make warmth (which can be used for power with some more materials)