Posted by jburk to Planetology at July 6, 2005 11:21 PM

Mars is a rocky planet with an ancient volcanic past, but new findings show the planet is more complex and active than previously believed – at least in certain places. Finding those places, however, turns out to be trickier than just looking at landforms like river valleys or lakebeds or searching for specific minerals. "Context is everything," said Philip Christensen, Principal Investigator for the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) on Mars Global Surveyor and for the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on Mars Odyssey, as well as lead scientist for the Mini-TES instruments on the Mars Exploration Rovers. "There has been a lot of excitement about finding specific features or minerals, but THEMIS, together with the TES infrared spectrometer, is giving us an overview by finding all the minerals. It gives us context – the underlying geology of the place."