Quote from: Star One on 09/27/2015 07:40 pmQuote from: NovaSilisko on 09/27/2015 07:09 pmSo the way I read it is "Seasonal martian flows turn out to be the solution that's been staring us in the face for ten years"?Seems like it. This seems pretty significant finding on the face of it. As it must change the probability of life being found on Mars. Also kind of useful for any future humans living on Mars.Hmm... Perhaps it's just me but it seems like ever since the giant smack in the face that was the discoveries of the early Mariner missions, talk of water on mars has been spoken almost... hushed and reluctant. A very conservative approach to it, a reluctance to risk repeating that situation. The fact it's taken quite this long to really determine that they are indeed water - or rather, I should say, conclude that they're water. The prevailing explanation has been ever since the discovery of these flows is that they're flows of water/brine, but suggesting extant liquid water on mars perhaps seemed like too much too fast
Quote from: NovaSilisko on 09/27/2015 07:09 pmSo the way I read it is "Seasonal martian flows turn out to be the solution that's been staring us in the face for ten years"?Seems like it. This seems pretty significant finding on the face of it. As it must change the probability of life being found on Mars. Also kind of useful for any future humans living on Mars.
So the way I read it is "Seasonal martian flows turn out to be the solution that's been staring us in the face for ten years"?
That Boston Herald article was interesting reading as it suggested any organisation that in this case has taken a very conservative approach, literally taking years to come to the conclusion they are apparently announcing tomorrow. Smacks still of them getting their fingers burnt over that Martian meteorite and the supposed hints of life from years back.
If RSL form via atmospheric deliquescence, then they are likely eutectic brines with temperatures and water activities too low to support terrestrial life
I've heard, anecdotally, that just about every planetary science spacecraft gathers more data than it can transmit. So data management and figuring out what is important to transmit is an inherent part of designing a mission.They always need more bandwidth, but it's not a simple case that they are dumping stuff and they would not dump it if they had more bandwidth. They'll probably always have more than they can transmit. I think that the issue is more about the slope--bandwidth is increasing slowly, but the amount of data gathered is increasing much more rapidly (think high-res imagers).
Today’s study was based on predictions that 400,000 years ago such a shift in the planet’s axis took place. The researchers used radar instruments onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA spacecraft that’s orbiting Mars. They analyzed the radar images of the ice deposits within the planet’s polar ice caps, looking out for signs of erosion and other features, like so-called spiral troughs that are created by the wind. Tracing these features can reveal how ice accumulated and retreated through time. The researchers confirmed that around 400,000 years ago an ice age ended. Since the end of that ice age, about 87,000 cubic kilometers of ice accumulated at the poles, especially in the north pole. That’s exciting, because 400,000 years is pretty recent when talking about planets in the Solar System.
Ancient hot springs may have bubbled up at a spot just south of the Martian equator. Left-behind mineral deposits described in a new study are not the first evidence of such features on Mars. But if confirmed, the discovery could affect where NASA’s Mars 2020 mission rover lands to start its hunt for signs of life.The spot scrutinized in the new study is called Margaritifer Terra. This heavily cratered site with lots of fractures in its surface may have formed from magma or melting rock from asteroid impacts. Analysis of high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests not all of the site’s features resulted from volcanic activity or heavy hits to the Martian surface. Certain ridges along fractures in one of the region’s impact craters have mineral deposits that may have come from the upwelling of water from ancient hot springs, researchers report July 15 in Geophysical Research Letters.
Some Mars experts are eager and optimistic for a dust storm this year to grow so grand it darkens skies around the entire Red Planet.This biggest type of phenomenon in the environment of modern Mars could be examined as never before possible, using the combination of spacecraft now at Mars.A study published this week based on observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) during the most recent Martian global dust storm -- in 2007 -- suggests such storms play a role in the ongoing process of gas escaping from the top of Mars' atmosphere. That process long ago transformed wetter, warmer ancient Mars into today's arid, frozen planet."We found there's an increase in water vapor in the middle atmosphere in connection with dust storms," said Nicholas Heavens of Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia, lead author of the report in Nature Astronomy. "Water vapor is carried up with the same air mass rising with the dust."A link between the presence of water vapor in Mars' middle atmosphere -- roughly 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) high -- and escape of hydrogen from the top of the atmosphere has been detected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, but mainly in years without the dramatic changes produced in a global dust storm. NASA's MAVEN mission arrived at Mars in 2014 to study the process of atmosphere escape."It would be great to have a global dust storm we could observe with all the assets now at Mars, and that could happen this year," said David Kass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. He is a co-author of the new report and deputy principal investigator for the instrument that is the main source of data for it, MRO's Mars Climate Sounder.Not all Mars watchers are thrilled with the idea of a global dust storm, which can adversely affect ongoing missions. For instance: Opportunity, as a solar powered rover, would have to hunker down to save energy; the upcoming InSight lander's parameters would need to be adjusted for safe entry, descent and landing in November; and all the cameras on rovers and orbiters would need to deal with low visibility.Decades of Mars observations document a pattern of multiple regional dust storms arising during the northern spring and summer. In most Martian years, which are nearly twice as long as Earth years, all the regional storms dissipate and none swells into a global dust storm. But such expansion happened in 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and 2007. The next Martian dust storm season is expected to begin this summer and last into early 2019.The Mars Climate Sounder on MRO can scan the atmosphere to directly detect dust and ice particles and can indirectly sense water vapor concentrations from effects on temperature. Heavens and co-authors of the new paper report the sounder's data show slight increases in middle-atmosphere water vapor during regional dust storms and reveal a sharp jump in the altitude reached by water vapor during the 2007 global dust storm. Using recently refined analysis methods for the 2007 data, the researchers found an increase in water vapor by more than a hundred-fold in the middle atmosphere during that global storm.Before MAVEN reached Mars, many scientists expected to see loss of hydrogen from the top of the atmosphere occurring at a rather steady rate, with variation tied to changes in the solar wind's flow of charged particles from the Sun. Data from MAVEN and Mars Express haven't fit that pattern, instead showing a pattern that appears more related to Martian seasons than to solar activity. Heavens and coauthors present the dust storms' hoisting of water vapor to higher altitudes as a likely key to the seasonal pattern in hydrogen escape from the top of the atmosphere. MAVEN observations during the stronger effects of a global dust storm could boost understanding of their possible link to the escape of gas from the atmosphere.
Astronomers were just looking through photographs received from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Monday, when they noticed something slightly out of place.There, on the surface of the enigmatic Red Planet, in one of the few regions not obscured by a dust storm, was none other than the wide-eyed Beaker - the shy and ill-fated assistant of Dr Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppet Show.Well, no, not actually. That would be absurd. But the resemblance is striking and you practically can't unsee it once spotted.