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Showing Articles for: Planetology Total Articles: 457 Newest: Mar 10, 2012 |
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This week, a mechanical geologist the size of a golf cart and nearly 156 million miles away galvanized the world with news that Mars bears unequivocal evidence of once-watery conditions capable of supporting life as we know it. Yet for all the excitement surrounding the discovery, the value of the Mars exploration program may lie as much in what it suggests about the early history of Earth and about the prospects for habitable planets around other stars as it does about Mars.
One of the foundations supporting NASA's case for water's past presence on Mars, at least near the rover Opportunity, is salty chemical forms of sulfur known as sulfates. These mineral salts were found in abundance during Opportunity's studies of a rock outcrop sitting in its Meridiani Planum landing site.
Astronomers have detected hydrogen peroxide, or H2O2, in the atmosphere of Mars, proving a 30-year-old theory about the planet's atmospheric chemistry. It's the first time a chemical catalyst of this sort has been found in a planetary atmosphere other than the Earth's, said Douglas Pierce-Price at the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii, where the observation was made.
Dust gradually obscures the Sun during a blue-sky martian sunset seen in a sequence of newly processed frames from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. "It's inspirational and beautiful, but there's good science in there, too," said Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., lead scientist for the panoramic cameras on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. The amount of dust indicated by Opportunity's observations of the Sun is about twice as much as NASA's Mars Pathfinder lander saw in 1997 from another site on Mars.
Depending on how you see it, Mars is the Red Planet or the Pink Planet or, for that matter, the Orange Planet, the Salmon Planet, or the Butterscotch Planet. No one can say for certain what color Mars is. With digital photographs now flooding from NASA's Mars rovers, scientists are trying to translate the strings of ones and zeros into images that convey the planet's true hues. Compounding the challenge is the fact that no two people see color and no two computer monitors display color in precisely the same way.
The first look beneath the martian surface has shown that the soil composition changes dramatically with depth and hints that trace amounts of water have been present recently or may even be there now, researchers said Thursday. The Opportunity rover has spent the last three days examining a 4-inch-deep, 20-inch-long trench it created with its front wheel in Meridiani Planum.
The first look beneath the Martian surface has shown that the soil composition changes dramatically with depth and hints that trace amounts of water have been present recently or might even be there now, researchers said Thursday. The Opportunity rover has spent the past three days examining a 4-inch-deep, 20-inch-long trench it created with its front wheel in Meridiani Planum.
Mars has polar ice caps, and pockets of liquid water are suspected to exist beneath the martian surface. Yet compared to Earth, Mars is a very dry place. Why is Mars so arid? The answer may lie in the random nature of planetary birth.
Temperatures at the surface of Mars appear to vary more frequently and more dramatically than is typical on Earth, preliminary data from NASA's Opportunity rover shows. While the minute-by-minute shifts were not unexpected, observing them for the first time suggests scientists will soon gain a better understand of how the red planet's atmosphere behaves, which could improve the safety of future landing efforts.
The first close-up pictures of the outcrop of rock discovered by NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars rule out the possibility that the layered rock was created by volcanic lava flows. The finding makes it much less likely that there was once a large body of water at the Meridiani Planum site. But the photographs revealed a new mystery - small grains of an apparently different material embedded in the layers of stone.
NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue to send back photos from Mars, some offering tantalising geological evidence that water once flowed across the red planet's surface. But researchers caution that there are other explanations.
Time keeping on two sides of another planet turns out to be a challenge, at least when calibrated from our own rhythms. On Earth, it took thousands of years for navigators to get terrestrial time on some reliable global standards. But when not on our globe, the familiar clock ticks need a sun calibration. Some of the first interplanetary clocks started during the 1976 Viking Mars mission, but since then interplanetary time-keeping has moved on. NASA's Michael Allison describes how to wind a Martian watch.
Martian dust storms might be detectable from Earth, say researchers who suspect electrical signals from banging dust particles ought to be detectable as radio and microwave noise. If they are correct, it could reveal a lot about the atmosphere of the Red Planet and create a new and inexpensive way to monitor its climate.
When the data from NASAs Mars rovers was released, geological sciences professor David Blackwell thought it was interesting, but he remained skeptical. You cant really be sure about [data] like that until you have the samples in your hands for testing, Blackwell said. Although their conclusions are feasible, there are other conclusions that are equally feasible.
Nasa's robot rover Opportunity has found spherical grains in the soil of Mars, suggesting they could have been rounded by the action of water. But scientists say meteorite collisions can also produce rounded grains by melting Martian rock on impact.
The UI plans to participate in the highly publicized search for water on Mars in April, when a university-constructed radar will bounce radio waves over the Martian surface and analyze the returning signals for signs of water. The process, one UI scientist says, is like "hitting the Liberty Bell with a sledgehammer and nanoseconds later hearing a pin drop."
After more than a century of wild speculation, decades of serious searching, and years of collecting increasingly compelling evidence, there is suddenly a scientific and media buzz over whether Mars is a planet sculpted by water. Thing is, that question is already answered in the minds of most Mars experts. The latest news -- a previously unheralded mineral called hematite has been detected by NASA's Opportunity rover -- dribbled out late last week and over the weekend. It might turn out to be a key moment in Mars exploration history, but some scientists think it is more likely to represent just another piece in a huge puzzle of a planet that could remain largely enigmatic for years to come.
Nasa scientists have discovered what might be the most compelling evidence yet of rocks formed in water on Mars. The Opportunity rover has sent back pictures of rock slabs that appear to contain thin layers, say researchers. On Earth, this feature is suggestive of sedimentary rocks that are the product of material deposited by water or wind.
New pictures from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reveal thin layers in rocks just a stone's throw from the lander platform where the rover temporarily sits. Geologists said that the layers -- some no thicker than a finger -- indicate the rocks likely originated either from sediments carried by water or wind, or from falling volcanic ash. "We should be able to distinguish between those two hypotheses," said Dr. Andrew Knoll of Harvard University, Cambridge, a member of the science team for Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. If the rocks are sedimentary, water is a more likely source than wind, he said.
The Grand Canyon has been getting mentioned in a number of recent articles about Mars this month, as Arizona and Mars have something in common: a very big ditch. The first images sent back from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter showed a deep, nearly unending gorge that is referred to by many as the "Martian Grand Canyon." Called Valles Marineris, it often gets comparison to Arizona's top attraction in order to put into perspective the sheer scale of features on Mars.
A rock found in the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco in 2001 has been confirmed as Martian in origin. The meteorite's chemical signature was checked out by researchers at the UK's Southampton Oceanography Centre.
Scientists continue to make step-by-step progress in utilizing the talents of a robot field geologist on the surface of Mars. Early findings from science instruments on the Spirit Mars rover have yielded a blend of old news and fresh outlooks about the physical makeup of Mars in evidence at the Gusev Crater landing site.
The Spirit rovers first detailed look at the soil of Mars show it to be a complex jumble of surface materials, akin to that found at the Viking and Mars Pathfinder landing sites. Using Spirit-deployed science gear to study a select patch of Mars at Gusev Crater, silicon, sulfur, chlorine, calcium, iron, and nickel have been detected. One mineral, Olivine has also been found. That finding would seemingly cast doubt on the prevalence of water as a geological agent at Gusev Crater.
The weather forecast for Mars: Cold. Breezy. Dust devils a hundred yards wide. This is late summer in Gusev Crater, where the Spirit rover is beginning to move around on the surface. While the ground might be a balmy 44 degrees Fahrenheit, the air above it climbs to only 12 or 15 degrees. Although there are no weather instruments on the twin rovers -- Opportunity lands in about a week on the other side of the planet -- the robotic geologists can help the science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory learn more about Mars' mysterious atmosphere.
Viewer's of the Martain sky would be treated to the unusual sight of not one, but two tiny moons, likely asteroids that were captured in the distant past by Mars gravitation. Both were discovered in August 1877 as a result of a systematic search by Asaph Hall (1829-1907) of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Hall actually became so disconsolate after not finding anything that he considered giving up the search, but after some encouragement from his wife, he persisted and found two satellites within several nights of each other.
Long John Silver's announced today that it will give America free Giant Shrimp if NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project finds conclusive evidence of an ocean on Mars by February 29, 2004. The out-of-this-world offer from the world's most popular seafood chain celebrates NASA's efforts to find traces of ocean water - and possibly, evidence of life - on Mars. Steve Davis, President of Long John Silver's, Inc., and A&W Restaurants, Inc. sent a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, expressing support for NASA's efforts to find conclusive evidence of an ocean on Mars. In addition, Davis announced plans to provide free Giant Shrimp to America if conclusive evidence of an ocean is found.
While astronomers peer at the surface of Mars, now making its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years, scientists are learning the secrets of its deep interior using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne.
Studies of the unique landscape in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica provide new insights into the origin of similar features on Mars and provide one line of evidence that suggests the Red Planet has recently experienced an ice age, according to a paper in this weeks issue of the journal Nature. The distribution of hexagonal mounds and other features on the Martian surface at mid-latitudes similar to those in the Dry Valleys also supports previous scientific assertions that a significant amount of ice lies trapped beneath the Red Planets surface.
Earth and its companion planet, Mars, are both enjoying a period of warm climate between their respective Ice Ages, according to a study published on Thursday in Nature, the British science weekly. Pictures sent back by United States orbiters have shown that Mars has "dusty, water-ice-rich mantling deposits" in layers that are metres thick, it says.
Is there water on Mars? When Mars Express reaches the Red Planet on 25 December we will be closer than ever to discovering if the ancient river valleys on the surface of Mars hide huge reservoirs of water beneath. Watch and listen to the evidence on VideoTalk.
Mars may be going through a period of climate change, new findings from NASAs Mars Odyssey orbiter suggest. Odyssey has been mapping the distribution of materials on and near Mars surface since early 2002, nearly a full annual cycle on Mars. Besides tracking seasonal changes, such as the advance and retreat of polar dry ice, the orbiter is returning evidence useful for learning about longer-term dynamics.
Unprecedented mapping of the magnetism of Mars' surface is revealing surprises and new mysteries about the Red Planet. The first surprise is that Mars' crust is in some places ten times more magnetized than Earth's crust. That's despite the fact that Mars' has virtually no global magnetic field today, said space scientist Jack Connerney of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
In an unnamed crater in Mars's southern hemisphere, orbiting spacecraft have uncovered a fan-shaped geological formation with twisting and overlapping features that a pair of researchers call characteristics of a "textbook" drainage basin with sedimentary deposits. The find suggests water did not just flow across the martian surface during brief floods but that rivers and lakes once had a sustained presence on the Red Planet.
In a long-running debate over whether Mars ever had long-lasting rivers, the latest images supporting the "yes" side have been put forth. Pictures from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show eroded ancient deposits of transported sediment long since hardened into interweaving, curved ridges of layered rock. Scientists interpret some of the curves as traces of ancient "meanders" made in a sedimentary fan as flowing water changed its course over time.
Ripples of sand sculpted by wind on the Martian surface soar higher than their terrestrial counterparts in relation to the distance between each one, a new study shows. While several conditions might contribute to the difference, observations of Mars are not yet fine enough to tell exactly what's going on.
Mars is kind of like Texas: things are just bigger there. In addition to the biggest canyon and biggest volcano in the solar system, Mars has now been found to have sand ripples twice as tall as they would be on Earth. Initial measurements of some of the Red Planet's dunes and ripples using stereo-images from the Mars Orbiter Camera onboard the Mars Global Surveyor have revealed ripple features reaching almost 20 feet high and dunes towering at 300 feet.
UC Berkeley Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Michael Manga wanted to learn about the evolution of planets, so he built a couple of his ownmodels that is. Since both time and distance limit observations of planetary evolution, scientists need to be creative in their research methods. Manga is no exception. While many use computer simulations to study such developments, Manga takes a stickier routecorn syrup.
The other day I happened to read something about Mars that mentioned the high wind there. If there is no air in space, how can there be wind on Mars? There is lots of air on Mars. It just isn't air we can breathe. The atmosphere of Mars is 96 percent carbon dioxide, about 3 percent nitrogen and 1 percent other stuff, including water vapor and a little bit of oxygen. And it is a very thin atmosphere. The average air pressure there is only about 1 percent of Earth's.
In the high-tech world of modern science, where sophisticated computers tear through complicated calculations, the value of arithmetic might seem negligible. Yet simply being able to count proves to be one of the most powerful weapons in a planetary scientist's arsenal.
Norway's Arctic archipelago Svalbard has won rave reviews from Mars researchers linked to the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). A team has just spent the summer working on Svalbard, and dubbed it "perfect." That's because they believe Svalbard offers conditions that likely existed on Mars when both that planet and earth came into being around 4 billion years ago.
Astronomers have long attributed Mars's global orange-brown color to oxidized iron rust in the dust that coats its surface. The source of the rust was always assumed to be water, whether from Percival Lowell's canals of the 19th century or the torrential outflow channels seen by the Viking orbiters in 1976. However, recent observations have put a damper on the notion that Mars was once awash, at least for long. The surface lacks deposits of carbonates (such as limestones) that would have formed from the interaction of water with Mars's carbon-dioxide atmosphere. Nor are there clays from weathered materials. And Mars shows widespread surface deposits of minerals such as olivine that don't survive long in the presence of water.
The red planet does not lack for water in its frozen state. Great swaths of the Martian surface appear to be underlain by ice-impregnated dirt, and a fresh look at data returned by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft concludes that the planet may have stashed even greater amounts of ice than first thought. According to investigator William V. Boynton (University of Arizona), subsurface regions surrounding Mars's polar caps may contain at least 70 percent ice by volume the equivalent of buried glaciers.
The origin of planets, the role of impacts on Mars' weather, Jupiter's atmosphere and recent results from the Mars Odyssey mission will be some of the topics that will be discussed at this year's American Astronomical Society/Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting, hosted by NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.
After a decades-long quest, scientists analyzing data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have at last found critical evidence the spacecraft's infrared spectrometer instrument was built to search for: the presence of water-related carbonate minerals on the surface of Mars. However, the discovery also potentially contradicts what scientists had hoped to prove: the past existence of large bodies of liquid water on Mars, such as oceans. How this discovery relates to the possibility of ephemeral lakes on Mars is not known at this time.
After a decades-long scientific quest, scientists analyzing data from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have at last found critical evidence the instrument was built to search for the presence of water-related carbonate minerals on the surface of Mars. However, the discovery also potentially contradicts what scientists had hoped to prove: the past existence of large bodies of liquid water on Mars, such as oceans and seas.
The idea that Mars was once a warm place, awash with oceans that could harboured early life has taken a knock - new data suggests it was always cold, frozen and probably lifeless. A survey of the Red Planet's surface has revealed only traces of carbonates, minerals that should have formed in abundant quantities if Mars once had expansive seas. On Earth, the mineral is found in limestone and chalk deposits around the world.
Traces of a mineral indicative of water have been found all over Mars surface, suggesting that liquid water does or did exist on the Red Planet. But the low quantities of the mineral mean its unlikely Mars ever had oceans or large lakes, a new study concludes. The examination of surface dust by NASAs orbiting Mars Global Surveyor also sheds light on a longstanding atmospheric mystery.
The last 21 years a NAU astronomy professor has been trying to determine if water has been, or is, present on Mars. Nadine Barlow is one of several Flagstaff scientists involved in NASAs exploration strategy to follow the water on Mars, an effort to determine if life ever arose on the planet, to characterize the climate and geology of Mars, and to prepare for human exploration of the planet. Barlow has studied Martian impact craters since 1982 when she was a graduate student at the University of Arizona.
Mars is the most Earth-like other world known, and with the two planets on the verge of their closest approach in recorded history (Aug. 27), it's time for the planets to weigh in. In this tale of the tape, we present the most pertinent and interesting facts that compare and contrast the two very different worlds.
It's not every day you get to watch a planetary ice cap melt, but this month you can. All you need are clear skies, a backyard telescope, and a sky map leading to Mars. Actually, you won't need the sky map because Mars is so bright and easy to find. Just look south between midnight and dawn on any clear night this month. Mars is that eye-catching red star, outshining everything around it. It's getting brighter every night as Earth and Mars converge for a close encounter on August 27th.
The two moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos could be the byproducts of a breakup of a huge moon that once circled the red planet, according to a new theory. The capture of a large Martian satellite may have taken place during or shortly after the formation of the planet, with Phobos and Deimos now the surviving remnants. Origin of the two moons presents a longstanding puzzle to which one researcher proposed the new solution at the 6th International Conference on Mars, held here last week.
Although impressionistic in a rudimentary way, upon second glance, the scratches begin to take form, suggesting that the artist might have been trying to depict a variety of animal life. Looking at something like this is not unlike gazing at cloud formations and envisioning all sorts of heavenly sculpture. The image in the upper left-hand corner, for example, appears to be that of a parrot holding a large seed in his beak. Just below that, one could perceive the curved lines to be the outline of a tortoise, and below that, a pair of gophers or prairie dogs seem to be playfully running toward one another.
Unusual warm spots on Mars might represent "ice towers" similar to those seen in Antarctica, say researchers. They could even harbour life, Nick Hoffman of Melbourne University told a conference on Thursday. Hoffman detected warm spots in the Hellas Basin after scrutinising infrared images taken with THEMIS, the heat-sensing camera on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. The spots are between 20 and 40 degrees warmer than their surroundings both night and day, and irrespective of whether they are being hit by sunlight.
Breathtaking" new maps of likely sites of water on Mars showcase their association with geologic features such as Vallis Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. The maps detail the distribution of water-equivalent hydrogen as revealed by Los Alamos National Laboratory-developed instruments aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft. In an upcoming talk at the Sixth International Conference on Mars at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Los Alamos space scientist Bill Feldman and coworkers will offer current estimates of the total amount of water stored near the Martian surface. His presentation will be at 1:20 p.m., Friday, July 25.
The successful launches of the two new Mars missions--Spirit and Opportunity--will help to answer questions about the fate of water on the red planet. The debates go back to the first views from the 1976 Viking landers: if water shaped the Earth, wind may have shaped Mars.
Something is happening on Mars and it's so big you can see it through an ordinary backyard telescope. On July 1st a bright dust cloud spilled out of Hellas Basin, a giant impact crater on Mars' southern hemisphere. The cloud quickly spread and by the Fourth of July was 1100 miles wide--about one-fourth the diameter of Mars itself.
Researchers with NASA are looking to the land of the midnight sun to study the red planet, heading to the remote Svalbard Islands next month to test future Mars probes in its barren, frozen climate. The Arctic Svalbard archipelago shares several features of Mars' environment, such as permafrost, volcanoes and hot springs, the expedition's leader, Norwegian geologist Hans E.F. Amundsen, told The Associated Press Monday.
NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft is revealing new details about the intriguing and dynamic character of the frozen layers now known to dominate the high northern latitudes of Mars. The implications have a bearing on science strategies for future missions in the search of habitats. "Once the carbon-dioxide layer disappears, we see even more water ice in northern latitudes than Odyssey found last year in southern latitudes," said Odyssey's Dr. Igor Mitrofanov of the Russian Space Research Institute (IKI), Moscow, lead author of a paper in the June 27 issue of the journal Science. "In some places, the water ice content is more than 90 percent by volume," he said. Mitrofanov and co-authors used the changing nature of the relief of these regions, measured more than 2 years ago by the Global Surveyor's laser altimeter science team, to explore the implications of the changes.
A year's worth of observations by NASA's Odyssey spacecraft paint a new picture of a more dynamic Martian surface than expected, coupled with what seems to be a changing environment. Preliminary analysis of data from Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) show that different layers of the planet, including some lava flows, must have been deposited under varying environmental conditions through time. Further, the red planet's surface bedrock varies significantly in thickness, the data reveal. It is exposed in some spots, and in other regions it's buried for thousands of square miles by thick layers of dust.
This Mars Global Surveyor image, acquired in March and released last week, shows dozens of repeated layers of sedimentary rock in a western Arabia Terra crater. Wind has sculpted the layered forms into hills somewhat elongated toward the lower left (southwest). The dark patches at the bottom (south) end of the image are drifts of windblown sand. These sedimentary rocks might indicate that the crater was once the site of a lake -- or they may result from deposition by wind in a completely dry, desert environment, said scientist at Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the orbiting spacecraft.
The prospect of a moist Mars fostering primitive life forms has excited scientific interest in exploration of the Red Planet. But a new, rival theory has emerged that tries to undermine evidence of water and leave the idea of a wet planet literally in the dust.
Mars' most celebrated watery feature may not form from water at all, but from wind, says a geologist who has found the driest, dustiest explanation yet for Martian gullies.
What would we find if we were to dig a hole all the way down to the centre of the Earth? According to high school science books we would discover a liquid iron alloy core and a smaller solid inner core at the center. For ten years, geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon has presented increasingly persuasive evidence that at the very centre of the Earth, within the inner core, there exists a five mile in diameter sphere of uranium which acts as a natural nuclear reactor.
Mars may be the god of war, but its namesake planet apparently has a soft heart. Information from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft suggests the martian core is at least partially fluid. In a paper published online by Science on March 7, a team of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and California Institute of Technology report on their analysis of more than three years of orbital data from Mars Global Surveyor.
A new study concludes that the core of Mars is the consistency of the syrupy goop found inside chocolate-covered fruit candy. The inference was made simply by noting minor changes in the position of a Mars-orbiting spacecraft, caused by tides. Yes, tides on Mars. While one commonly thinks of tides having to do with oceans on Earth, and being generated only by the Moon, the inner parts of heavenly bodies endure tides, too. On Earth, gravity from both the Moon and the Sun fuel ocean tides and simultaneously stretch and pull the entire planet by less noticeable amounts. Mars, too, is tidally tweaked by the Sun.
Images from the visible light camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, combined with images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, suggest melting snow is the likely cause of the numerous eroded gullies first documented on Mars in 2000 by Global Surveyor.
Ravines and gullies visible at the surface of Mars could have been dug not by subterranean water but rather by melting snow on the planet's surface, according to a study released on Wednesday.
Two U.S. spacecraft orbiting Mars have found signs that liquid water can survive on the Red Planet, despite its freezing climate and thin atmosphere. The clues pointing to this are recently discovered gullies apparently eroded by the water.
Water flowed across Mars in recent times and could be flowing today, one of NASA's principal Mars investigators said yesterday. Arizona State University geologist Phil Christensen, using detailed photos from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, also may have unraveled one of the planet's biggest mysteries:
Previous explanations have included water bubbling up from underground springs or frozen carbon dioxide. The latest theory, by a US geologist, depends on the slight "wobble" of the planet.
Images from the visible light camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, combined with images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, suggest melting snow is the likely cause of the numerous eroded gullies first documented on Mars in 2000 by Global Surveyor. The now-famous martian gullies were created by trickling water from melting snow packs, not underground springs or pressurized flows, as had been previously suggested, argues Dr. Philip Christensen, the principal investigator for Odyssey's camera system and a professor from Arizona State University in Tempe.
A geologist says he may have figured out what caused mysterious gullies on Mars: water trickling from the melting of snow that had built up over thousands of years. His theory may help scientists figure out where to seek signs of life on the planet. The research suggests that even though Mars is now very cold, flowing water may have carved the gullies in the middle latitudes within the past 500,000 years.
Ankle-deep water covering all of Mars. That's how much is thought to be lurking subsurface on the red planet. Data gathered by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has given the first global look at the total amount of water stored near the Martian surface. However, expert taking part in the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) continue to be baffled by what they see following years of spacecraft observations of the planet. Increasingly, Mars appears to be a water-rich world capable of supporting future human explorers and, perhaps, home for present-day life.
Lurking just beneath the surface of Mars is enough water to cover the entire planet ankle-deep, says Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Bill Feldman. Feldman on Saturday released the first global map of hydrogen distribution identified by instruments aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft and offered initial minimum estimates of the total amount of water stored near the Martian surface. His presentation came at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver. For nearly a year, Los Alamos' neutron spectrometer has been carefully mapping the hydrogen content of the planet's surface by measuring changes in neutrons given off by soil, an indicator of hydrogen likely in the form of water-ice, within about 35 degrees latitude of the north and south poles. "It's becoming increasingly clear that Mars has enough water to support future human exploration," Feldman said. "In fact, there's enough to cover the entire planet to a depth of at least five inches, and we've only analyzed the top few feet of soil."
For future Martian astronauts, finding a plentiful water supply may be as simple as grabbing an ice pick and getting to work. California Institute of Technology planetary scientists studying new satellite imagery think that the Martian polar ice caps are made almost entirely of water ice-with just a smattering of frozen carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," at the surface.
Hope springs eternal for life on Mars. And new research shows that it is likely that water springs up from shallow aquifers to shape gully-like features found on the red planet. Images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor show clear evidence of gully landforms. But what caused the features has been hotly debated. There are those who see a tie to liquid water bubbling up from subsurface. Some researchers concede that the gullies were formed by liquid water, but from dissipating snowpacks or melting ground ice. Others have speculated that erosive forces, such as wind or liquid carbon dioxide have gouged out the features.
NASA scientists have discovered how an intricate martian network of streams, rivers and lakes may have carried water across Mars. Using new three-dimensional data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and a powerful state-of-the-art computer code that 'models' overland water flow, scientists visualized the complex flow of martian water.
During the 1970s, photos from the first Mars orbiters showed dry river channels that were apparently quite ancient dating from the first 500 million years of the planets existence. The river valleys implied liquid water, raising the possibility that life might have developed. Today, the Martian surface is cold and dry, and astronomers and climate modelers have struggled to explain such warm conditions in the early years, when the sun was considerably weaker. The leading theory is that early Mars had a thicker atmosphere, which generated a potent greenhouse effect. But to some researchers, this idea seems insufficient to account for above-freezing temperatures.
The way scientists have worked out the geologic age of the surfaces on Mars could be seriously in error, a new study suggests. The findings are important because they challenge thinking which also influences theories about whether or not the Red Planet once sustained life.
Research by a University at Buffalo planetary geologist suggests that generally accepted estimates about the geologic age of surfaces on Mars -- which influence theories about its history and whether or not it once sustained life -- could be way off. Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the research eventually could overturn principles about the relative ages of different areas on the Red Planet that have not been questioned for nearly 20 years.
The formation of gullies has been seen for the first time on Mars. According to University of Melbourne geologist Dr Nick Hoffman, gullies near the Red Planet's south pole form as the seasonal ice cap retreats in the Martian spring. "In itself the observation of active flows is a dramatic discovery since no movement has yet been seen on Mars, except for some dry dust avalanches," he told BBC News Online.
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Arizona Lunar Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, AZ, and Cornell University, Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Ithaca, NY have discovered further evidence for the possible existence of a changing, and perhaps predictable, Martian climate.
Dark surface streaks along canyon and crater walls on Mars could be signs of running water presently scouring the surface, according to a new study. The streaks occur in areas thought by some scientists to involve long-running thermal activity under the surface. The salty water seeps to the from below, now and then, because of interactions with hidden, hot, molten rock, the thinking goes. The process is thought to operate somewhat like an ephemeral hot spring on Earth.
Is there running water on Mars? Presentations at the American Geophysical Unions meeting this week are revisiting the debate over what the dark streaks seen on some dusty Martian slopes represent. One point of view comes from a University of Arizona team: that at least some of the streaks may be trails of salty water, driven to the surface by hot magma from deep within Mars.
New observations by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars show a planet rich in water, but suggests that for billions of years it has done little other than remain frozen in the soil. The finding challenges theories that Mars was once a warm, wet place hospitable to life. Instead, the current Martian surface a cold, dusty and overwhelmingly dry place may have been the norm for much of the planet's history, scientists said Sunday during a briefing at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The torrential downpours and flash floods that carved the gigantic river valleys on Mars may have resulted from a ferocious asteroid bombardments billions of years ago. The valleys indicate a wet past, but researchers have struggled to explain how Mars could ever have been warm enough to sustain rainfall that could gouge the Martian valleys. But, according to Teresa Segura, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her colleagues, the frequent asteroid impacts that showered Mars 3.5 billion years ago could have warmed the planet for thousands of years at a time and created conditions for heavy rainfall.
Arid, stony Mars, whose sinuous canyons and broad flood plains have long beckoned Earth-bound explorers, may never have been the warm, wet home of life that scientists have envisioned so hopefully, a new study of the planet's past maintains. In a scenario that contradicts decades of hints from orbiting spacecraft that rivers and an ocean once covered the Martian surface during a prolonged warm period, scientists at the University of Colorado and NASA's Ames Research Center are posing a vastly different concept.
A new study led by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers indicates Mars has been primarily a cold, dry planet following its formation some 4 billion years ago, making the possibility of the evolution of life there challenging at best.
Water ice has been discovered on the surface of Mars near the fringes of the southern polar cap, extending the detection of frozen water to three regions of the Red Planet. Researchers had previously found frozen water beneath Martian soil in the southern hemisphere and at the surface of the northern cap. They had been puzzled over the lack of a similar finding in the icy southern cap. Only frozen carbon dioxide, commonly called dry ice, had been found there. Other researchers have suggested in previous studies that the dry ice makes up but a thin layer that hides a deep water ice cap. The new discovery, made with NASA's orbiting Odyssey spacecraft and announced today, could support this idea, said study leader Timothy Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Mars might not have been a warm, wet, and hospitable planet that somehow lost its atmosphere, scientists said yesterday, instead suggesting it was occasionally bombarded by melting meteorites that carved out its distinctive craters and valleys.
Among the thousands of visitors to Mt. Etna this year, one group came not just to look at one of most famous volcanoes on Earth. Dozens of scientists trekked up Etna together this fall to observe what Etna has in common with Mars. Researchers interested in what makes the red planet tick can't study the planet in person-at least not yet. To help them interpret what they see in Mars images and other remote sensing data--and to test their instruments and procedures--they turn to Earth.
A father-daughter science team has found what they say are the oldest known impact craters on Mars, ghostly structures that could only be discerned with special software and the latest elevation data. Images obtained by SPACE.com reveal hints of circular outlines and subtle depressions that appear to be craters created during tremendous asteroid or comet impacts that pummeled the Red Planets original crust 4 billion years ago or more. The features have since been mostly buried or eroded away. If the entombed craters exist as suspected, then the current visible surface of Mars does not represent the original crust, as some scientists have thought.
There's no end in sight for the debate over whether Mars was once wet, warm and Earth-like, or forever a frigid world where water never had a chance to thaw and flow. In the latest foray, Mars researchers Sarah T. Stewart of the California Institute of Technology and Francis Nimmo of NASA Ames Research Center argue not only that the gullies running down crater walls must have been created by water, but that the alternative theory of carbon dioxide eruptions is too unwieldy and unlikely.
Professor John Mustard and colleagues discovered that a climate change theory for Earth applies on Mars as well. Mustards article, which was published in the Sept. 26 issue of Nature, states that the orbital theory of climate change, known since the 1970s to apply on Earth, also applies on Mars. The theory explains how changes in the Earths atmosphere and now in Mars atmosphere are based on the planets orbit.
When scientists first examined the layered structure of Mars' northern ice cap, somewhat crudely detected by the Mariner 9 orbiter in the early 1970s, they speculated the bands were composed of alternating tiers of ice and dust accumulated over years. Researchers have now used more recent data collected by the Mars Global Surveyor to make measurements of the layers down to fractions of inches using the high resolution Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor. What they're learning about the layers of Martian history may tell them something about what controls the climate of the Red Planet.
On Earth, periglacial is a term that refers to regions and processes where cold climate contributes to the evolution of landforms and landscapes. Common in periglacial environments on Earth, such as the arctic of northern Canada, Siberia, and Alaska, is a phenomenon called patterned ground. The "patterns" in patterned ground often take the form of large polygons, each bounded by either troughs or ridges made up of rock particles different in size from those seen in the interior of the polygon.
Fluctuations in climate on Mars can be traced to variations in the planet's astronomical behaviour. French scientists have found a correlation between layers of ice at the Red Planet's poles and dramatic climate oscillations caused by orbital variation.
Mars undergoes periodic "wobbles" on its axis and variations in its orbit that, like the Earth, may cause it to endure ice ages, say scientists. The evidence comes from high-resolution images of the planet's northern polar ice cap, a dome of water-ice mixed with dust that is up to 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) thick.
Astronomers have found the first direct evidence that the structure of the polar caps on Mars is linked to climate changes driven by fluctuations in the planet's motion. A team led by Jacques Laskar of the CNRS Institute of Celestial Mechanics in France established the link by inspecting new high-resolution images. The researchers believe that the polar caps could reveal as much about the history of Mars as the terrestrial ice caps have told us about the history of the Earth (J Laskar et al 2002 Nature 419 375).
Water roaring out of an overfilled lake carved an instant Grand Canyon _ a valley more than mile (1.6 kilometers) deep _ on the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new analysis of pictures taken by spacecraft. Researchers at the National Air and Space Museum said the flood of water originated from a huge lake _ large enough to flood both Texas and California _ that overflowed into a nearby impact crater. When that crater filled up, said geologist Ross Irwin, the water eroded away a ridge-like barrier and was sent rampaging across a plain. Within a short time, a deep and wide gully called Ma'adim Vallis was carved from the Martian surface.
New maps show that Ma'adim Vallis, one of the biggest valleys on Mars, formed when a large lake overflowed over a low point in its perimeter. After mapping contours that link the ancient lake's shoreline and the overspill region, researchers say the water could have cut the deep valley and flooded several impact craters downstream.
The discovery of a huge ancient lakebed in the equatorial highlands of Mars, based on data from Mars Global Surveyor's camera and altimeter, bolsters the widely held but still controversial view that Mars supported a widespread hydrosphere and warm climate during its early history.
For years, scientists thought that Mars was a cold, dry planet. But pictures sent back by the Mars Global Surveyor over the past three years have rocked that long-held view. Now, many scientists think that the planet may in fact have once been a warm, wet worldwhat University of Arizona geologist Victor Baker calls a Blue Mars. The Surveyor images show fissures, gullies, valley networks, and layered rocks that resemble sedimentary depositsfeatures normally formed by water. But a few dissenters are offering another explanation for the eroded landscape: Carbon dioxide, not water, shaped the Martian surface, they say. According to this view, dubbed White Mars by University of Melbourne geologist Nick Hoffman, Mars was always a frozen wasteland.
Scientists, as a rule, are not a giddy bunch. But evidence from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft of underground ice on Mars has astronomers tossing out descriptions like "stunning" and "amazing." In a Perspective piece in this week's Science magazine, Jim Bell, professor of astronomy at Cornell University, suggests these initial findings might just be the "Tip of the Martian Iceberg," and that there may be large subsurface water ice deposits on our neighboring planet. He talked with CNN Science and Technology producer Marsha Walton...
There are tantalizing indications emerging from the thousands of infrared images taken so far by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft that Mars experienced a series of environmental changes during active geological periods in its history. "We knew from Mars Global Surveyor that Mars was layered, but these data from Odyssey are the first direct evidence that the physical properties of the layers are different. It's evidence that the environment changed over time as these layers were laid down," said Dr. Philip Christensen, principal investigator for Odyssey's camera system and professor at Arizona State University, Tempe. "The history of Mars is staring us in the face in these different layers, and we're still trying to figure it all out."
Scientists are reporting this week detailed evidence for vast amounts of water ice just beneath the surface of Mars. The finding, which confirms preliminary data released earlier this year, should help answer an age-old question regarding where ancient Mars' water went, and it is likely to fuel greater interest in probing the Red Planet for signs of life. The new data, provided by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, will be reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The findings were embargoed for release Thursday afternoon, but some news outlets in the U.S. and Britain reported on them last week and over the weekend. The journal lifted the embargo this morning.
Water under the surface of Mars could speed up the search for life on the red planet and lighten the load of manned missions in the next two decades, a British space scientist said Monday.
NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has reportedly detected water ice under the surface of the red planet, according to scientific papers to be published this week, a finding that could be a giant step in exploration of Mars. Many astronomers believe Mars used to have quantities of liquid water on its surface, but they have never agreed on where the water went. Research to be published in this week's edition of the journal Science may help answer that question.
Water-ice has been found in vast quantities just below the surface across great swathes of the planet Mars. Ice shows up blue on the gamma-ray spectrometer. The finding by the American space agency (Nasa) is undoubtedly one of the most important made about the Red Planet.
Vast reserves of hydrogen lurk under the dusty Martian surface, scientists will confirm on Thursday, when scientific details of observations made by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft are revealed. That hydrogen is almost certainly locked up in crystals of water ice.
Dr. Jim Garvin, Lead Scientist of NASA's Mars Exploration Program said today that a major announcement is forthcoming about the presence of water ice just under the surface of Mars. Garvin made his comments at a Mars Exploration Breakfast sponsored on Capitol Hill by Lockheed Martin and Ball Aerospace. According to Garvin the announcement's timing depends on the process required to get the results reviewed and then published in a scientific journal. Garvin said that this was also being done out of respect for the principal investigator behind the announcement "who has been waiting twenty years" for this data. NASA has scheduled a Space Science update for next Thursday, 30 May at 12:00 noon EDT- which is highly suggestive of the time a press embargo would lift for an article appearing in that week's issue of Science magazine.
Scientists from several nations begin an unprecedented 3-and-1/2-week pilot field experiment on the Santa Cruz flats near Eloy, Arizona, today, May 20, to discover how dust devils may affect atmospheres on Earth and on Mars. The 2002 MATADOR Field Test, led by Nilton Renno and Peter Smith of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, is being funded by NASA' Human Exploration and Development of Space program and by the National Science Foundation's Division of Atmospheric Sciences.
This image, centered near 50.0 S and 17.7 W displays dust devil tracks on the surface. Most of the lighter portions of the image likely have a thin veneer of dust settled on the surface. As a dust devil passes over the surface, it acts as a vacuum and picks up the dust, leaving the darker substrate exposed. In this image there is a general trend of many of the tracks running from east to west or west to east, indicating the general wind direction. There is often no general trend present in dust devil tracks seen in other images. The track patterns are quite ephemeral and can completely change or even disappear over the course of a few months. Dust devils are one of the mechanisms that Mars uses to constantly pump dust into the ubiquitously dusty atmosphere. This atmospheric dust is one of the main driving forces of the present Martian climate.
When it was announced last month that the Mars Odyssey satellite had found water ice beneath the planet's frozen carbon dioxide south polar ice cap, at least one scientist was thrilled. "I felt excited!" says Dr. Lidija Siller, a physicist from the University of Newcastle. "I believe that the data I have explains how this water got trapped underneath the surface." Dr. Siller presented the results of her research -- which involves studying photochemical reactions in ice -- at the Condensed Matter physics conference on Monday, part of the Institute of Physics Congress in Brighton, England. Photochemical reactions are changes in the chemistry of a substance that occur when light is shined at it. On Mars, both ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun and low energy electrons can cause photochemical reactions in the carbon dioxide ice caps. The electrons are produced when high energy X-rays from the Sun fall on the ice.
Explosive volcanic eruptions on Mars, fueled by the same stuff that makes your Pepsi fizz, fueled colossal floods that carved some of the gorges and gouges found on the Red Planet, a new study suggests. The forces at work in this soda pop science were almost beyond imagination. Take the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens or the 1993 Mississippi River flood, then multiply the destructive force hundreds of times over and you'll get an inkling of the destructive potential of epic, sudden floods of bygone eras on Mars. Our planet, too, may have experienced similar "superfloods", as they are sometimes called.
When astronauts finally land on Mars, a safe bet is that they'll head for northern climes if they intend to spend much time there. That's because nearly all the available water is frozen as ice at the north pole. Planetary scientists have been aware of this for some time, but they now have a new clue why it is so. In the March 21 issue of the journal Nature, California Institute of Technology researcher Mark Richardson and his colleague John Wilson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveal that the higher average elevation of the Red Planet's southern hemisphere ultimately tends to drive water northward.
Researchers may have explained why the north and south poles of Mars are so different. It is because the planet's atmospheric circulation is affected by the higher terrain in the southern hemisphere. The north polar cap is made mainly of water-ice, while the southern cap appears to be mainly frozen carbon dioxide or "dry ice". Using a sophisticated computer model of the planet's atmosphere, researchers report that the thin Martian air (which is mostly carbon dioxide) rises and falls more vigorously in the southern than in the northern hemisphere. They say this creates an overall south-to-north flow of water vapour, which could explain the observed difference in the compositions of the poles.
Mars provides a dictionary definition for the phrase 'polar differences'. A vast ice cap of water ice and snow dominates the planet's north pole. Yet around the south pole, a comparatively tiny cap appears to be composed mostly of frozen carbon dioxide, popularly known as dry ice. A new study may explain why. Fresh clues have been found in a computer model of broad circulation patterns that change with the seasons and appear to control how and where water is transported on the Red Planet and why snowstorms are largely limited to the north. Further, the research suggests that the atmospheric circulation may be controlled to some extent by the fact that Mars' southern hemisphere is generally higher than the surface elevations in the north hemisphere.
Scientists have provided new evidence that liquid carbon dioxide, not running water, may have been the primary cause of erosional features such as gullies, valley networks, and channels that cover the surface of Mars. Research suggesting that condensed carbon dioxide found in Martian crust carved these features is reported by Kenneth L. Tanaka and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the University of Melbourne, Australia, will appear this month in Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union.
A team of researchers studying photographs of Mars has found teardrop features that they say were sculpted by flowing water as recently as 10 million years ago. Evidence for water-carved channels on the Red Planet dates back to the 1970s Viking missions. More recently, the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) probe has provided pictures that reveal what may be ancient river beds and sedimentary layers associated with lakes or oceans. Controversial evidence has emerged indicating more recent bursts of water flowing down ravines and crater walls. The newest study involves MGS images studied by scientists at NASA and the University of Arizona. The researchers examined a series of fissures that stretch more than a thousand kilometers (600 miles) across the lava-covered Cerberus Plains, just north of the Martian equator. The images show geologic evidence for catastrophic floods, the scientists said in a press statement issued today. Their work is detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Not only lava, but water has recently flooded from fissures near Mars' equator, University of Arizona scientists have discovered. And they're not talking about a trickle. They're talking possibly 600 cubic kilometers of water. That's one and a quarter times as much water as in Lake Erie, four times as much water as in Lake Tahoe, and 65 times as much water as in California's Salton Sea. "This is a completely different water release mechanism than previously studied on Mars," said Devon Burr, a UA doctoral candidate in geosciences.
New pictures of Mars released this week shed light on the composition of the planet's polar ice cap, reveal and odd dust storm embedded in a volcano's crater, and show a strangely off-center impact crater. The pictures were produced by the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which this month began its second year of an extended mission. One of the newly released pictures has helped researchers better understand how sand and dust mix with water ice on the Red Planet.
Scientists began recognizing physical similarities between Antarcticas ancient, slow-moving glacial ice and the martian polar ice caps decades ago. Now, with help from a new ice-dating experiment designed by researchers from the ArkansasOklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, theyll someday be able to estimate the age and therefore stability of martian ice from the way it luminesces, or glows, with exposure to radiation. The Antarctic case is really just a test case for Mars if we can work successfully with Antarctic ice, Mars shouldnt prove any more difficult, says University of Arkansas researcher Paul Benoit. His teams experiment capitalizes on the ability of Antarcticas ice to capture the energy from cosmic rays and store it as luminescence a phenomenon that likely occurs in martian ice too. And since Antarctic ice and martian polar ice exhibit similarities in thickness and motion, investigators are confident that luminescence data on earthly ice will mimic future readings from its martian counterpart.
The observation of small gullies on Mars was one of the more unexpected discoveries of the Mars Observer Camera (MOC) aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The characteristics of these gullies suggested that they were formed by flowing water and soil and rocks transported by these flows. They appeared to be surprisingly young, as if they had formed in the last few million years or even more recently. This was a major surprise because the presence of liquid water seemed impossible on Mars in such a recent past. In their initial analysis, the MGS Camera investigators Mike Mallin and Ken Edgett proposed a scenario involving ground water seepage from a sub-surface liquid water reservoir located a few hundred meters or less below the surface. The existence of such an aquifer would have had major consequences for the future of Mars exploration and the possibility of life. However, the process capable of maintaining such a shallow aquifer at temperatures above the freezing point of water remained unclear. Analysing the MGS Camera data archive, we were able to find example of gullies originating from the top of isolated peaks and from dune crests. In these cases, the involvement of a subsurface aquifer was unlikely.
With a host of spacecraft at Mars or being readied to go there over the next two years, scientists are poised to uncover the planet's liquid secrets. The big question: Was Mars once warm and wet? Simple to pose, but not easy to answer. While many scientists think Mars may once have harbored vast oceans or lakes, there is no proof beyond some presumed ancient shorelines, sediment deposits, and other highly sketchy data or pictures. The question is important because liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. While evidence is rolling in from two spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, an artist has taken some liberties with some of that data to create a series of renderings showing what Mars might once have looked like.
Long-term changes, possibly related to a global climatic shift, have been detected on the surface of Mars. High-resolution images of Mars' south pole show dramatic erosion in its year-round frosty upper layers. Astronomers have also identified a reservoir of carbon dioxide that, if released, could alter the planet completely. The observations "herald a new era in the study of Mars," says David Paige of the University of California.
The martian ice caps are shrinking. As they are made mostly of frozen carbon dioxide, this evaporation could trigger an increase in Mars' own greenhouse effect. Images from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show that ice ridges and escarpments have retreated over the past two years or so. The orbiting probe has also captured the ice thickening and thinning with the passing seasons.
Vast fields of carbon dioxide ice are eroding from the poles of Mars, suggesting that the climate of the Red Planet is warming and the atmosphere is becoming slightly more dense. Experts say that over time such changes could allow water to return to the Martian surface and turn the frigid planet into a "shirt-sleeve environment."
Mars would make a lousy host for the Winter Olympics. Yes, there's the lack of air to consider. But more important, Martian snow turns out to be rock hard. Worse, it is melting away at an alarming rate. In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole.
New research from the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that areas of the surface of Mars may be protected from the full force of solar radiation by areas of intensely magnetized crust. The startling vision of Mars' magnetosphere is being explored by David Brain, a doctoral student at CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and his research advisor, Professor Fran Bagenal, using magnetometer data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Brain's research has implications for the escape of atmospheric gases into space and climate evolution on the red planet, as well as the radiation environment of these areas -- possibly making them safer landing sites for future human expeditions.
Mars is now dry, dusty and cold, but a new study confirms that the Red Planet once was covered by vast oceans and had more water per square mile than Earth. In fact, it once had enough water to cover the planet to a depth of almost a mile, researchers say, citing an analysis of data measuring the amount of molecular hydrogen in the atmosphere.
An analysis of high-resolution topographic maps and photographs, as well as recent studies of Martian meteorites suggest the presence of water on the Red Planet for a longer time scale than scientists had previously believed. "There has always been evidence from very ancient valley networks that water was there at some time extremely early on," Brian M. Hynek, doctoral candidate in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis said. "But new evidence from meteorites, young gullies, and better topographic resolution is helping to clarify a more precise time frame for water on the planet."
In their search for water and possible life on Mars, scientists are turning to new data generated by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images and Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topography from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft.
Soon after Mars was formed, it was bombarded by numerous large meteorites and asteroids. Scientists have discovered an unexpectedly large grouping of impact basins buried under Mars' northern plains that resulted from this pounding. They used Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topographic data to find them, because they cant be seen in images of the Martian surface. Above these basins are thin young plains, but the lowland crust beneath them is actually extremely old and was formed very, very early. According to Herbert Frey of the Geodynamics Branch of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, this is a radical departure from the popular belief that the northern lowlands were formed later in Martian history, perhaps by plate tectonic style processes. This discovery is a crucial piece to one of the greatest unsolved puzzles about Marswhy does its surface have two distinct hemispheres: one that is high and heavily cratered and one that is low and sparsely cratered? The origin of this fundamental crustal dichotomy is uncertain both in terms of how and when it formed. But this recent discovery of the numerous buried craters may pin down the answer to when the lowlands first formed.
In their search for water and possible life on Mars, scientists are turning to new data generated by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images and Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topography from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The Elysium and Amazonis Planitia regions of Mars have come under particularly intensive study because of their recently proposed young ages (10-100 million years ago or less). Several different recent studies have respectively shown that: some of the volcanic flows were likely emplaced over ice-rich ground; at least one flow originated from the long rift-type vents of the Cerberus Fossae; and recent floods also originated from the vent system, perhaps depositing water in the shallow subsurface for later volcanic flows to interact with. But the capstone of this work is the discovery by NASA/Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center scientist Susan Sakimoto and colleagues that the new data reveals regionally extensive lava eruptions from the same vent system as the water. While earlier data hints at this conclusion, Sakimoto's evidence provides the strongest support yet that these volcanic and hydrologic events indeed are both young and related in origins, and could perhaps still occur on Mars in the future.
A giant dust storm, larger than any seen on Earth, is ravaging the face of Mars. It is being monitored by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), which is in orbit about the Red Planet, and by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is stationed just above the Earth. The storm is one of the most intense ever seen on Mars, and has engulfed the entire planet for the past three months.
The biggest dust storms in 30 years have been raging since June on Mars, obscuring the planet's surface, heating the upper reaches of the thin Martian atmosphere by up to 80 degrees and cooling the surface layers 10 degrees below normal, astronomers reported yesterday. From an earthly perspective, the global impact of the storms is roughly equivalent to the impact of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines that carried ash and dust around the world.
Press Conference - October 11, 2001: A pair of eagle-eyed NASA spacecraft -- Mars Global Surveyor and Hubble Space Telescope -- are giving amazed astronomers a ringside seat to the biggest global dust storm seen on Mars in several decades. The Martian dust storm, larger by far than any seen on Earth, has raised a cloud of dust that has engulfed the entire planet for the past three months.
A dusty welcome mat is out for NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, now less than two weeks away from dropping into orbit around the red planet. A global dust storm of massive proportions, unlike any seen since the early 1970s, now rages across Mars. The already on-duty spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor, as well as the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, are giving scientists front row seats to the churning storm. At a NASA briefing on October 11, scientists offered their views on what they call the "perfect storm" on the planet. Mars weather watching is even more critical because the soon-to-arrive Odyssey spacecraft must repeatedly dip into the Martian atmosphere to move itself into a correct orbit for carrying out science duties.
In early August some eighty international scientists from around the world met in August in Houston, Texas, at the NASA-sponsored GeoMars conference to discuss current and future missions to the Red Planet and instruments, data and observations relevant to the subsurface distribution of volatiles. There was a large contingent of Italian scientists, representing ESA radar missions, and a variety of experts in permafrost, remote sensing, and geophysical technology. Experts came from around the globe to contribute their ideas and experience to the meeting, co-ordinated by Stephen Clifford of the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
A new animation of the complex geologic evolution of Mars reveals evidence of a vast, ancient reservoir of water that may have sculpted enormous gorges on Mars and left water trapped in numerous reservoirs close enough to the surface to be reached by human explorers today. The 3-D tour through time, obtained exclusively by SPACE.com, attempts to illustrate where water on early Mars came from, where it went, and where it might be hiding now.
An enormous ancient drainage basin and aquifer system lies hidden and deformed in one of the most geologically dynamic landscapes on Mars, scientists conclude from a comprehensive, more than 10-year study. They estimate that a basin almost the size of the United States or Europe for billions of years covered part of Tharsis, a magmatically active bulge in the western hemisphere.
When we make it to Mars, there's an excellent chance that we will find a vast, easy-access watering hole to help sustain life on the Red Planet. This ice-crusted reservoir was found by Nadine Barlow, director of UCF's Robinson Observatory, and her partners John Koroshetz, a former UCF physics undergraduate student, and James Dohm, a research associate with the University of Arizona's Department of Hydrology and Water Resources. Barlow's use of impact craters to identify a near-surface ice reservoir south of the big canyon system Valles Marineris on Mars is outlined in the August 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
In recent years, NASA has launched wave after wave of robots to Mars. One of their goals is to find evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet and carved its spectacular, Grand Canyon-like terrain. But is the water hypothesis all wet? An iconoclastic Australian geoscientist claims the fourth planet from the sun is as dry as a bone - and always has been. American researchers initially scoffed at Nick Hoffman's thesis. But now they're starting to take him more seriously. There's more at stake than the popular theory that ancient rivers, lakes and perhaps oceans carved the rust-red Martian terrain. According to Hoffman, those mountains, mesas and canyons were dug by epic floods of liquefied carbon dioxide gas, not by water.
Scientists may have discovered the largest flood channels in the solar system on Mars, currently a cold desert planet. A system of gigantic ancient valleys - some as much as 200 kilometers wide - lies partly buried under a veneer of volcanic lava flows, ash fall and wind-blown dust in Mars' western hemisphere. New observations made with the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveal northwestern slope valleys (NSVs) northwest of the huge martian volcano, Arsia Mons, and south of Amazonis Planitia, site of a postulated ocean.
The largest valley system in the solar system, discovered underneath layers of hardened lava, ash and dust on Mars, could have delivered enough water to fill an ocean within a matter of weeks, according to scientists. The network of gorges, situated in the Western Hemisphere between a giant volcano and the possible remnants of an ocean, is 10 times larger than its nearest rival on the red planet, according to the researchers.
Scientists may have discovered the largest flood channels in the solar system on Mars, currently a cold desert planet. The northwestern slope valley system is ten times larger than Kasei Valles, the largest previously known outflow channel system on Mars, said James M. Dohm of the University of Arizona. The best explanation is that they were formed by catastrophic floods that at their peak potentially discharged as much as 50,000 times the flow of the Amazon River, Earth's largest river, Dohm said. Smaller outflows flooded the valleys later in martian history. Dohm and others from the University of Arizona Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey-Flagstaff and Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery in the June 2001 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
A new global map of Mars has revealed a host of valleys carved from otherwise smooth areas that might be signs of the Red Planet's most recent ice age. The features also bolster the case for a vast reservoir of water ice just below the surface. While Mars is known to contain significant volumes of water ice at its poles, researchers have yet to prove their suspicion that water ice lurks under the rest of the planet's dusty surface. If found in warmer non-polar regions, water ice would be an invaluable resource that could support human colonies and exploration. Whether found at the equator or the poles, water ice also might provide habitats for underground Martian life.
New images of the surface of Mars provide the first direct evidence that the climate of Mars changed during the last 100,000 years, much more recently than the hundreds of millions of years scientists had previously thought, according to Brown University geologist John Mustard. The high- resolution images show evidence of water ice closer to the equator than had previously been observed. Mustard, with graduate student Christopher Cooper and undergraduate Moses Rifkin, wrote about the findings in the July 26 issue of Nature.
New images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show signs of recent climate change on the "Red Planet" dating back about 100,000 years instead of millions or billions, American scientists said on Wednesday. John Mustard and geologists at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, have identified and mapped a unique, young terrain resembling cemented ice that suggests there are shallow ice reserves below the surface. High-resolution images from Surveyor show the terrain is breaking down, indicating climate change and perhaps modern Martian ice ages.
Though there has been a fair amount of evidence that the Earth's atmosphere is undergoing global warming, the process is slow enough that there are plenty of skeptics, including some very influential people, who argue that it may not be happening at all. Global climate change does occur, however, and sometimes so quickly that you can watch it happening. Just look at our neighbor, Mars: within the last month, the global atmospheric temperature of Mars has increased by approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data being received by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
Scientists have known for decades that Mars, at least in its ancient past, has had a considerable amount of water. But when Mars Global Surveyor began mapping the Red Planet in sharp detail early in 1999, it disclosed startling evidence that water has shaped martian landforms within the past 10 million years. The discovery challenges the prevailing view that Mars' surface has remained extremely cold and dry -- much as it is today -- for the past 3.9 billion years. It confirms the idea that internal heat periodically triggers short-term warmer and wetter conditions -- conditions conducive to life -- in the global martian hydrological cycle, University of Arizona Regents' Professor Victor R. Baker says in a review article, "Water and the martian landscape," published in Nature July 12. Baker is head of the UA department of hydrology and water resources.
Three weeks ago a new dust storm erupted on Mars. It's the largest in 25 years and still growing. The storm is so big that amateur astronomers using modest telescopes can see it from Earth. And the cloud has raised the temperature of the frigid Martian atmosphere by a stunning 30 degrees Celsius. Now that's global warming! Enjoying the best view of the storm is NASA's Mars Global Surveyor in orbit around the Red Planet. The spacecraft carries an instrument called "TES" -- short for Thermal Emission Spectrometer -- that can measure the temperature and dust content of the Martian atmosphere on a daily basis.
An enormous dust storm exploded on Mars three weeks ago, shrouding the planet in haze and raising the temperature of its atmosphere a whopping 30 degrees C.
A gigantic dust storm has enveloped about half of Mars, recent NASA spacecraft images show. "This is by far the largest storm we've seen during the Mars Global Surveyor mission," said Philip Christensen of Arizona State University in Tempe, principal investigator for the probe's thermal emission spectrometer. "We expect that the storm will continue to grow -- perhaps becoming a global storm of the type that was seen during the Mariner 9 and Viking missions in the 1970s."
Barren, alien, yet strangely beautiful, this is the planet Mars as it has never been seen before from the Earth. The new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope is the best ever obtained by an Earth-based observatory. They reveal that while it may be a hostile, arid, lifeless world, Mars is far from inactive. Swirling dust storms can be seen raging across a cratered, rusty landscape while high in the thin atmosphere, sweeping frosty white ice clouds look as if they have been painted by an artist's hand. The photograph was taken on June 26, when Mars was about 43 million miles from Earth - the nearest it has been since 1988.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft recently caught sight of a dust devil dancing across the Martian surface. While it isn't the first of the tornado-like weather systems to be imaged, it is yet another reminder that Mars is an ever-changing planet. Dr. Ken Edgett, a staff scientist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, Calif., regularly tracks the dust devils and studies surface features. As the operator for the Surveyor's orbiter camera, he is one of the first to see fascinating images of the red planet. Dr. Edgett recently discussed the importance of dust devils and how they are transforming the look of Mars.
New satellite images from Mars strongly suggest that ground ice existed near the planet's equator in the recent geologic past, a discovery that could boost prospects for finding evidence of extraterrestrial life, scientists announced this week. The high-resolution pictures, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor satellite, reveal bizarre landforms that likely formed due to the presence of frozen water just below the surface, University of Arizona researchers said. The ice could still be there today.
Piles of crater-topped debris snapped by NASA's Mars orbiter and caused by the teakettle explosion of water through volcanic lava flows at the planet's equator are the best evidence yet for recent liquid water at the Red Planet, a team of scientists say. Under a model devised by the University of Arizona and University of Hawaii researchers, the "rootless cones" formed after volcanic eruptions melted frozen water near the surface of Mars 10 million years ago -- practically present time in the geological view. The melting caused floods that carved channels and seeped into the ground.
New high-resolution images from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) show evidence of ground ice on Mars as recently as 10 million years ago. More striking is that the signs of geologically recent ground ice deposits are near Mars' equator, where ice was probably no deeper than 5 meters (15 feet) below the surface, University of Arizona scientists say. "If ground ice was present within 5 meters of the surface only a few million years ago, it is very likely to persist today within about the upper 10 meters," said UA planetary sciences Professor Alfred S. McEwen. "This is especially interesting because it is an equatorial region of Mars, more accessible to exploration."
Cones poking out from the surface of Mars could be evidence for recent water ice on the red planet this time just beneath some of the most parched regions of its rocky terrain. High-resolution images of an area the size of Canada taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera reveal what appear to be rootless cones. These geological formations are found on Earth where molten lava has flowed over waterlogged ground.
In the May 2001 issue of Sky & Telescope, Thomas Dobbins and William Sheehan discussed rare historical observations of bright, star-like flares from certain regions on the planet Mars. They suggested that the brightenings might be caused by specular reflections of sunlight off water-ice crystals in surface frosts or atmospheric clouds, specifically at times when the sub-Sun and sub-Earth points were nearly coincident and close to the planet's central meridian (the imaginary line running down the center of the visible disk from pole to pole). Based on their analysis, Dobbins and Sheehan predicted that flares like those last reported in 1958 might erupt this week in Edom Promontorium, near the Martian equator at longitude 345. They were right.
Mars -- the Red Planet, the god of war, the home of life? Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars ranks first on a short list as a home for life beyond Earth, past or present, in the minds of scientists and science fiction writers alike. Today, we are a bit closer to a definitive answer than we were when ancient people looked up at the ruddy "star" glimmering in the evening sky and called it Mars. The study of Mars led early astronomers to understand how the solar system works, and to develop a model that displaced Earth -- and humans -- from the center of the universe. They made one small step toward our current understanding of the universe.
A University of Arizona-led international team of 20 space scientists and engineers this week are conducting an ambitious field test of equipment to study dust devils swirling over the Santa Cruz flats near Eloy, Arizona. The "Matador" experiment, led by Peter Smith of the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and funded by NASA's Human Exploration and Development of Space enterprise, will help define instruments needed for studying much larger dust devils on Mars later in this decade, possibly in 2007.
Massive erosion shaped the surface of Mars, according to planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis. Brian M. Hynek, doctoral candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Roger J. Phillips, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences and director of Washington Universitys McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, suggest that western Arabia Terra, an area the size of the European continent, experienced an extensive erosion event caused by flowing water.
Massive erosion shaped the surface of Mars, according to planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis. Brian M. Hynek, doctoral candidate in Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Roger J. Phillips, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences and director of Washington University's McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, suggest that an area the size of the European continent experienced an extensive erosion event caused by flowing water.
The similarities between the valley networks of Mars and our own river networks here on Earth are biggest single element in the White Mars Theory that its leading proponents acknowledge as being the most uncertain. Nonetheless, several possible explanations for the valley networks have been proposed that don't require water.
There may be, or may have been, water on Mars but a debate over apparent shorelines on the planet's vast northern plains continues, with new research suggesting the features have nothing to do with what others have interpreted as a one-time enormous ocean. The author of the new analysis of gentle, parallel ridges in the blandest, flattest northern plains of enigmatic Mars argues instead that the features are large landscape bumps that resulted simply to relieve surface pressure from massive volcanoes, such as Tharsis, and other structures on the planet's surface.
Speculation that a mighty ocean once raged on Mars is unfounded, according to a duo of US space geologists who say the evidence for this was probably the remains of some vast seismic disturbance.
Planetary geologists have assaulted increasingly popular theories that water shaped features small and great on Mars, days before a NASA spacecraft begins an odyssey to search the red planet for signs of the life-making elixir.
Last June scientists announced that gullies seen on some martian cliffs and crater walls suggest that liquid water has seeped down the slopes in the geologically recent past. Researchers found small channels on slopes facing away from mid-day sunlight, with most channels occurring at high latitudes, near Mars' south pole. Now UA researchers propose an alternative explanation involving carbon dioxide erosion. They point to several reasons why CO2 is a better candidate than water in gully formation. One reason is that most gullies are found in the southern highlands, the oldest and coldest part of the planet, a place where liquid water is least likely to be stable.
Liquid carbon dioxide and not water may be responsible for cutting Martian gullies according to University of Arizona (UA) scientists. If it is liquid carbon dioxide rather than water that has been flowing on Mars it would be a severe blow to the chances of finding primitive live on the planet.
On rusty-red Mars, a curious deposit of gray-colored hematite (a mineral cousin of common household rust) could hold the key to the mystery of elusive Martian water. The word "rust" conjures up images of things that are red --like Mars and old nails-- but not all iron oxide is the same color. Here on Earth a gray-hued variety of iron oxide, a mineral called hematite, can precipitate in hot springs or in standing pools of water. Gray hematite is not the sort of rust you might expect to find on a desert-dry planet like Mars. But perhaps Mars wasn't always as dry as it is today. There are many signs of ancient or hidden water on the Red Planet including flash-flood gullies, sedimentary layers ... and hematite.
Planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and various collaborators have concluded that the Tharsis rise in Mars' Western Hemisphere is key to many of the Red Planet's mysteries, including its large-scale shape and gravity field, and its early climate and water distribution.
The Red Planet is alive with surprise. The constant stream of data relayed from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) is forcing a reexamination and revision of theories about Mars past and present, as well as how best to utilize surface and orbital reconnaissance spacecraft in the future. From evidence of greater explosive volcanic activity in Mars past to the increasing likelihood of finding Martian life today -- the emerging profile of the planet is a far cry from just a few years ago.
Two of the oldest volcanoes on Mars, which were erupting over three billion years ago, may still be active. This startling conclusion is reached by geologists using new data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, currently orbiting the planet. The volcanoes, named Tyrrhena Patera and Hadriaca Patera, are located in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet.
When the next mission to Mars lifts off in April, another robotic probe will be sent to learn more about conditions on a planet where humans may one day live. One great reason that we send robots: They don't mind crummy weather. When we humans follow, to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system, weather extremes like none we know await.
Chemical analysis of Martian meteorites supports the controversial theory of water on Mars, according to Meenakshi Wadhwa, PhD, associate curator of meteoritics at The Field Museum in Chicago. Her research was published in the February 23rd issue of Science. Last year, an analysis of images of Mars taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft revealed surprising evidence that the planet was once a watery place. On Earth, sedimentary rock is formed by deposition from water, and the photographs of Mars show hundreds of layers of sedimentation.
Microsymposium 33: March 10-11, 2001 Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas, US... The Hesperian is a critical time period in the history of Mars. During this time significant volcanism occurred in the Tharsis, Elysium, Alba, Hesperia, and other regions, significant planet-wide tectonic activity occurred in the form of wrinkle ridges and other structures, the outflow channels were emplaced and Valles Marineris came into prominence, the northern lowlands were resurfaced by the Vastitas Borealis Formation, and candidate glacial deposits were emplaced in the south polar regions. In spite of this wealth of geologic activity, the time boundaries and duration of this period are very poorly known. Any significant understanding of the geology and geodynamics of Mars must provide a better definition of the activity during this period, its relations, timing and absolute chronology.
A common substance found in ordinary classroom chalk could hold the key to a puzzle of planetary proportions: the mysterious whereabouts of water on Mars. The brittle, white material in chalk --a form of carbonate-- may seem rather ordinary, but finding carbonates on Mars would have some extraordinary implications. The discovery would provide strong evidence that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet. Such carbonates might also harbor the fossils of ancient Martian bacteria.
If it were possible to magically transport a cup of water from Earth to the surface of Mars, the liquid would instantly vaporize. Mars's atmosphere is so vacuous (it's less than 1% as dense as Earth's) that liquid water simply can't exist for very long on the Red Planet. That's a puzzle to planetary scientists, because Mars's surface is littered with signs of liquid water. Dried up valley networks, sedimentary deposits, and chaotic flood plains hint that billions of years ago Martian water flowed freely and that the atmosphere there must have been substantially thicker than it is now. But where did it all that Martian air go?
Two studies in the past year have supported the idea that large amounts of water once existed on Mars, likely flowing to the surface in large violent bursts to carve deep channels in catastrophic floods. Some of the evidence suggests that water may still reach the surface. But a longstanding question remains: Where did the water come from? New evidence indicates that much of the water may have been hauled to the surface by hot lava released during volcanic eruptions.
After years of debate, most scientists feel confident that Mars once heard the sound of rushing water. Now the outstanding mystery where that water came from may have been solved. Harry McSween of the University of Tennessee and colleagues have studied samples from the Shergotty meteorite volcanic rock from Mars that fell to Earth nearly 150 years ago. They conclude that, when Mars was young, a lot of water may have been spewed out as steam from the molten rock (magma) beneath the planet's surface.
Evidence from a Martian volcanic rock indicates that Mars magmas contained significant amounts of water before eruption on the planet's surface, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee and other institutions report in the Jan. 25 issue of Nature. Scientists say that channels on Mars's surface may have been carved by flowing water and an ancient ocean may have existed there, but little is known about the source of the water. One possible source is volcanic degassing, in which water vapor is produced by magma spewing from volcanos, but the Martian rocks that have reached Earth as meteorites have notoriously low water content. This study shows that before the molten rock that crystallized to form Martian meteorites was erupted on the surface of the planet, it contained as much as 2 percent dissolved water.
Layered terrains on Mars discovered just last year by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft bear a striking resemblance to sedimentary deposits here on Earth that form under water. Liquid water is scarce on Mars nowadays, but it might have been common four billion years ago. If these Martian layers turn out to have a watery origin, as some scientists suspect, they could hold the key to the mysterious history of water (and maybe even life) on the Red Planet. Studying Mars's sedimentary deposits, if that's what they are, could tell scientists if water existed on Mars long enough for primitive life to begin. Indeed, the layered rocks themselves may be the best places to go fossil hunting.
Some channels visible on the surface of Mars may have been gouged by ice, rather than by catastrophic flooding, as is generally believed. That is the view of Dr. Baerbel K. Lucchitta of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, who compared the Martian features with strikingly similar ones on the Antarctic sea floor.
Comparing sonar maps and satellite images of Antarctica with images of Mars, a geologist has bolstered a long-held belief that some Martian channels may have been carved by ice, rather than catastrophic floods of liquid water. Terrestrial ice streams, which snake slowly beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica, were long invisible to normal satellite imaging until radar imaging made them visible in the late 1990s. And now, ship-based sonar missions map the area where these ice flows merged with the surrounding seafloor during the last Ice Age, carving telltale patterns.
You're looking at a sea of ice," said geologist Ron Sletten, sweeping his arm toward an expanse of brown, jumbled rocks. It looked more like the surface of Mars or a lifeless desert than any ocean on Earth. But the dry and barren landscape of Beacon Valley concealed a sleeping giant, one Sletten and his team have come here to explore.
Mars may once have been a very wet place. A host of clues remain from an earlier era, billions of years ago, hinting that the Red Planet was host to great rivers, lakes and perhaps even an ocean. But some of the clues are contradictory -- they don't all fit together in a coherent whole. Little wonder, then, that the fate of water on Mars is such a hotly debated topic. The reason for the intense interest in Martian water is simple: Without water, there can be no life as we know it. If it has been 3.5 billion years since liquid water was present on Mars, the chance of finding life there is remote. But if water is present on Mars now, however well hidden, life may be holding on in some protected niche.
In the first step of a two-step process, NASA's Office of Space Science selected three proposals for detailed study as candidates for the next mission in the agency's Discovery Program of lower cost, highly focused, rapid-development scientific spacecraft. NASA has also decided to fund American participation in a mission to Mars being flown by another nation. In this "Mission of Opportunity" NASA will contribute to seismology, meteorology and geodesy (to measure the size and shape of the planet) experiments on the French-led NetLander Mission, scheduled for launch in 2007. The Mission of Opportunity team will receive $250,000 to conduct its feasibility study.
Not since Orson Wells terrorized Americans with little green men in 1938 has there been a more exciting year for Mars in the collective human imagination. One could hardly have written a better script for Mars exploration in 2000, a year in which stunning new photographs illustrated more clearly than ever that Mars begs in situ exploration.
Liquid water that once flowed on the surface of Mars could now be locked up deep in the planet's interior as an unusual form of ice, scientists reported earlier this month. In a paper published in the journal Nature December 14, Craig Bina of Northwestern University and Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California at Davis said that water could be transported into the interiors of terrestrial planets, including the Earth and Mars, as "ice VII", a rare, dense form of water ice that forms at high pressures and low temperatures.
Though Mars lacks a global protective magnetic shield like that of the Earth, strong localized magnetic fields embedded in the crust appear to be a significant barrier to erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. This conclusion by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, emerges from a new map of the limits of the planet's ionosphere obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
Though Mars lacks a global protective magnetic shield like that of the Earth, strong localized magnetic fields embedded in the crust appear to be a significant barrier to erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. This conclusion by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, emerges from a new map of the limits of the planet's ionosphere obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which was launched in 1996 and reached the planet 10 months later. The new data show that where localized surface magnetic fields are strong, the ionosphere reaches to a higher altitude, indicating that the solar wind is being kept at bay.
In a paper published Dec. 14 in the journal Nature, Northwestern University geologist Craig R. Bina reports that, in a novel twist on current thinking, water may be transported into the interior of planets as a high-pressure form of ice, rather than simply being transported while trapped within hydrous minerals or escaping as a fluid. Bina and co-author Alexandra Navrotsky, a chemist and materials scientist from the University of California, Davis, suggest that this process should become more important as planets cool, for example on a future Earth or on Mars.
New pictures released today show outcroppings on Mars that may represent sedimentary layers formed by ancient lakes, further adding to the expectation that Mars was once wet and might have harbored life. The images suggest that parts of ancient Mars may have been riddled with lakes, and that the geology of early Mars was much more dynamic than previously suspected, said the researchers who produced the images. And if life existed on Mars when these features formed, some 4.3 billion to 3.5 billion years ago, the researchers believe that fossil remnants may be sandwiched between the sedimentary rock layers, just as they are on Earth.
Layered geologic outcrops on Mars, that will be described in this week's issue of the journal Science -- may be composed of sedimentary rock that dates from the earliest span of martian history, between 4.3. and 3.5 billion years ago. Images of these sedimentary rock exposures, captured by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), suggest that parts of ancient Mars may have resembled a land of lakes, and that the geology of early Mars was much more dynamic than previously suspected.
New images taken from space show further evidence of gullies on the surface of Mars that may have been carved by water. The pictures reveal channels in the peaks of sand dunes within one of the planet's southern craters. The pictures come from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around the Red Planet.
Mars may not be volcanically dead. Lava may have flowed over its surface just a few tens of millions of years ago. Geologists say this is so recent that they cannot rule out the possibility that the Red Planet may burst into life again. A team of US scientists have identified young lava flows on the flanks of two of Mars' largest, thought to be extinct, volcanoes. They say that to settle the issue a lander will be required to visit the sites and analyse the surface rocks.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists studying Mars have discovered minerals with profound implications for the past history of the planet. The mineral olivine, an iron-magnesium silicate that weathers easily by water, has been found in abundance on Mars. The presence of olivine implies that chemical weathering by water is low on the planet and that Mars has been cold and dry throughout its geologic history.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists studying Mars have discovered minerals with profound implications for the past history of the planet. The mineral olivine, an iron-magnesium silicate that weathers easily by water, has been found in abundance on Mars. The presence of olivine implies that chemical weathering by water is low on the planet and that Mars has been cold and dry throughout its geologic history. New surface maps of Mars, developed by USGS scientists through a monumental set of 500 trillion calculations, provide amazing clarity and allow for more detailed study of the planet's minerals. "The large expanses of olivine, about one-million square miles, means chemical weathering on Mars is very low and has been low for most of its geologic history. This information contradicts a popular view of a past warm, wet period in Mars' geologic history," said USGS scientist Dr. Roger N. Clark at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, Calif. "If the warm period never occurred, other explanations for Mars' large canyons are warranted, and some have been proposed by other researchers."
On Earth, life requires water, therefore our search for life beyond the Earth is a search for water. For this reason we target Europa, a moon of Jupiter that may have a liquid ocean beneath a thick icy crust, and also Mars where huge erosional channels suggest the flow of fluids across the surface in the geological past. Many scientists believe that rivers and lakes existed in the past on Mars, and perhaps even oceans. However, this search on Mars may be ill-founded. Despite intense research, the evidence for water on Mars is scarce. Now a new theory suggests that the single strongest line of evidence for water on Mars - the "outburst flood channels" may have been formed not by liquid water but by cold dry eruptions of gas, dust and rock, fuelled by exploding liquid CO2.
Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the mysteriously high salt concentrations in exposed soils of Antarctica's Dry Valleys are due in large part to biological sulfur emissions in the oceans surrounding the continent. Such observations have important implications in the search for evidence of past or present life on Mars, as well as on understanding the chemical interactions between the Martian atmosphere and the red planet's surface.
Mars appears to have a huge underground ice reservoir that could serve as a "watering hole" for future human explorers trekking across the Red Planet. Researchers have spotted what they suggest is a near-surface ice reservoir, about the size of Arizona, located in the Solis Planum region, south of Mars Valles Marineris.
To celebrate the Mars Global Surveyors third year in orbit around the Red Planet, NASA has released an image the probe recently snapped of a Martian dust storm a billowing front that strongly resembles a Saharan storm seen earlier this year on our own planet. The Global Surveyors Mars Orbiter Camera, operated by Malin Space Science Systems, caught the Martian storm in the act on August 29, while it was moving as a front, outward from a central jet near the planets north pole. Such storms are common on Mars in the spring, when the frozen carbon dioxide that caps the planets poles sublimes (a direct change of state from a solid to a gas). As the carbon dioxide sublimes, it boosts the planets atmospheric pressure, allowing it to hold on to more dust and for longer periods.
Meteors that would be little more than a flash in the sky on Earth can cause massive explosions, vast dust storms and giant lightning bolts on Mars, say Russian scientists. By adapting some classified Cold War equations created to predict what nuclear blasts would do in Earth's atmosphere, scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres think they have a way of predicting how meteors would behave when they bust through the thin martian atmosphere.
Diverging from decades of conventional wisdom, a science team says liquid water can exist and pool on the surface of Mars, ideal for sustaining Martian life across the entire planet. If correct, the finding would build on images released in June that scientists have interpreted as showing liquid water at or near the surface of the Red Planet in recent geologic times. Many scientists were baffled by those images as it is widely assumed that liquid water cannot exist at Mars' surface due to the planet's thin atmosphere.
Mars today is arid. Its thin atmosphere and cold surface are no place for water. Yet many of the planet's surface features, vast plains and deep ravines, hint that water was once abundant. Now a chunk of rock that fell to Earth near the Egyptian village of El-Nakhla on 28 June 1911 provides the newest clue that water was once common on the Martian surface.
There may have been far less water on Mars in the past than most observers have assumed to date. The supposed ancient river channels may have been formed by katabatic winds carrying sand and dust over aeons, enhanced by flows of even purer carbon dioxide gas released when the dry ice permafrost warms up each year or occasionally when meteorites strike. If so, liquid water may never have been present on Mars, and the planet may always have been lifeless.
For six weeks this summer, a rough uninhabited island in the Arctic Circle became the focus of preparations for a human journey to Mars and a search for life there. Devon Island is within a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) of the North Pole, just 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of Greenland's northwest coast and 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) north of the U.S.- Canada border. It lies 75 degrees north of the equator, further north than Alaska's northernmost point.
Colossal canyons across Mars formed eons ago by massive floods of carbon dioxide and solid debris instead of liquid water, according to a controversial report this month. The theory suggests that the red planet experienced cold and dry conditions for most of its geological history, a scenario that would reduce the likelihood it ever harbored Earth-like life forms.
Once thought dead, Mars spewed floods of lava big enough to bury Canada in recent geologic time, with many eruptions occurring during the past 10 million to 100 million years, and others perhaps within the last 3 million years. "Volcanism is therefore likely to be an active geological process in current geological time in a few localized areas on Mars," concluded a new study by William K. Hartmann and Daniel C. Berman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
When a pair of scientists announced last month that they had found what appeared to be recent evidence for liquid water acting on the surface of Mars, most in the planetary-science community were flabbergasted -- including themselves. "I was brought kicking and screaming to this result," Ken Edgett said at a June press conference held to announce the startling Mars-water conclusion. Edgett and Mike Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems, authored the research paper arguing that newfound surface features on Mars seem to be the handiwork of groundwater gushing out of steep hillsides.
In the first three installments of this series, I described the current theories now being offered to explain Surveyor's remarkable discovery of what looks very much like recent eruptions of liquid groundwater onto Mars' surface -- and in the coldest, most unlikely parts of the planet imaginable. There are at least five theories bouncing around at the moment (in two of which the stuff erupting isn't even water, but carbon dioxide).
There are at least one, and maybe two, serious alternate theories proposing that the gullies on Mars are not water-produced -- and one of them states that the "fluid" that created them isn't even liquid! The first was described in some detail by Dr. Michael Carr of the U.S. Geological Survey at the press conference in which the discovery was first announced. Carr is arguably the world's leading authority on the subject of water on Mars, but he is seriously skeptical about these gullies being water-produced.
In some of the coldest regions on Mars, water appears to have recently gushed from just beneath the surface, running down crater walls and steep valleys. Those startling findings, based on an analysis of images taken by a high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, could radically revise the way scientists think about Mars and profoundly affect where and how they will search for life on the Red Planet.
In my previous report, I described one theory (the so-called "salty soda fountain" concept) being used to explain the startling new photos by Mars Global Surveyor which seem to show signs of recent eruptions of groundwater out of near-surface strata on Mars -- and in the coldest regions of Mars, at moderate to polar latitudes and usually on slopes facing away from the Sun. But there are rival theories -- in which the "springs" aren't springs at all. In one of these (currently favored by Dr. Jeffrey Kargel of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona), the gullies are indeed due to water runoff, but from something even more spectacular in its implications than subsurface springs -- namely, the intermittent accumulation and melting of thick layers of surface ice on Mars.
Last week when scientists revealed dramatic new pictures of flood-like gullies on Mars, the big surprise wasn't that the Red Planet might harbor water. Researchers have known for years that water exists there. There are trace quantities of water vapor in Mars' atmosphere and substantial amounts of water ice at the martian poles. There may even be enough frozen water beneath Mars' surface to fill a large ocean if melted. What was amazing is that water may be present as a liquid very near the planet's surface and occasionally on top of the surface when underground deposits burst forth for a brief flash flood.
Last week when scientists revealed dramatic new pictures of flood-like gullies on Mars, the big surprise wasn't that the Red Planet might harbor water. Researchers have known for years that water exists there. There are trace quantities of water vapor in Mars' atmosphere and substantial amounts of water ice at the martian poles. There may even be enough frozen water beneath Mars' surface to fill a large ocean if melted. What was amazing is that water may be present as a liquid very near the planet's surface and occasionally on top of the surface when underground deposits burst forth for a brief flash flood.
New research claims the crust of Mars may harbor up to three times more water than previously thought, providing the latest blow to the tarnished notion that the planet today is a dry, lifeless place.
The crust of the planet Mars may hold two to three times more water than scientists had previously believed. This finding is based on a study by Dr. Laurie A. Leshin of Arizona State University, comparing the amount of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, found in a meteorite of martian origin to the amount found in the martian atmosphere. Her report will be published in Geophysical Research Letters on July 15.
When the eagerly-awaited press conference was held Thursday on the new revelations by Mars Global Surveyor Surveyor, it quickly became clear that -- instead of discovering clear and unambiguous evidence of present-day near-surface Martian groundwater-- MGS had discovered something much more ambiguous and mysterious.
In the immediate weeks, months and years to come NASA will employ a slew of spacecraft to continue to hammer away at the tantalizing possibility of liquid water and life on Mars. One of those missions, the Mars Global Surveyor, is already at the task, returning to Earth on a daily basis virtually hundreds of high-resolution images of the planets surface.
In a recent paper presented at the 31st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference two Russian researchers highlight various common salt solutions that have surprisingly low melting points. Mars' soil is now thought to be very salt-rich.
Despite almost 40 years of being investigated from afar, Mars essentially remains a mystery. During the years, about two-thirds of the 32 missions planned for the Red Planet have failed, some never getting off the ground. So why go through the trouble?
Signs of liquid water have been found near the surface of Mars, sparking new speculation about the possibility of life on a planet that has intrigued humans since the late 1800s. The findings, which were presented Thursday during a NASA news conference in Washington, D.C., have "profound implications for the ultimate question: Are we alone?" NASA official Ed Weiler said.
The pictures of gullies and crevices carried on NASA TV Thursday morning could have been still shots taken from any number of movie westerns, the topography appeared that familiar. But, this being NASA, the pictures were more Buck Rogers than Roy Rogers and they were of Mars, not Monument Valley.
The tantalizing news announced Thursday that liquid water may lurk just below the red Martian soil could not have comes at a worse moment for NASA. The agency that won the Cold War space race by putting an astronaut's boot print on the moon is mired in a trough of doubt and self-examination after the loss of two of its most recent Mars missions.
In what could turn out to be a landmark discovery in the history of Mars exploration, imaging scientists using data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have recently observed features that suggest there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the surface of the red planet. The new images show the smallest features ever observed from martian orbit -- the size of an SUV. NASA scientists compare the features to those left by flash floods on Earth.
NASA scientists on Thursday revealed images of gullies, channels and deltas on Mars that they say indicate the presence of liquid water near the surface of the red planet and have "profound implications for the prospect of life" there.
The apparent discovery of evidence for liquid water close to the surface of Mars is enormously exciting. If this liquid water has broken through to the surface in the relatively recent past, as is now suggested, it changes our understanding of Mars profoundly.|Other|The Planetary Society|jb|No|No
Have scientists, for the first time, discovered signs of water seepage onto the surface of Mars, an indication the red planet could sustain life? "That subject will be addressed" at a news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., today, NASA spokesman Don Savage said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
Water could still be flowing on Mars, Nasa scientists believe. The announcement follows two days of speculation that evidence exists that recent running water has cut channels into the flanks of craters, something previously considered impossible.
The unmistakable signature of gushing water has been found on Mars, confounding current thinking about the Red Planet and fueling speculation extraterrestrial life may be closer by than was thought, scientists reported Thursday.
Thanks to NASA's unmanned planetary exploration program, evidence of the existence of past oceans on Mars has been accumulating for years, but no one had ever been able to say what the overall chemical composition of those oceans might actually have been like * until now. A recent analysis of the interior of a 1.2 billion-year-old Martian meteorite known as the Nakhla Meteorite has shown the presence of water-soluble ions that are thought to have been deposited in cracks by evaporating brine, according to a study by Arizona State University Regents Professor of Chemistry and Geology Carleton Moore, Douglas Sawyer of Scottsdale Community College, ASU graduate student Michael McGehee and Julie Canepa of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The finding, announced in the July issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, indicates that ancient Martian oceans had a chemical composition similar in variety and concentration to Earth oceans.
NASA announced today that scientists studying Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft images have recently observed features that suggest there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the martian surface.
Finding water on Mars could burst open the floodgates to a new era of exploration on the planet, fueling the drive for eventual human colonies. Futurists and far-thinkers say that if water is found to exist in sizable quantities, it someday could lead to everything from fuel farms and filling stations for rockets to shower stalls for astronauts.
Researchers using NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft announced Thursday that they found puzzling signs of water seeping into what appear to be young, freshly-cut gullies and gaps in the Martian surface. The startling discovery of recently-formed, weeping layers of rock and sediment has planetary experts scratching their heads.
New images from the Mars Global Surveyor probe suggest that there are present-day sources of liquid water on Mars, NASA confirmed Wednesday. The findings, to be detailed Thursday, are already providing a powerful boost to the search for evidence of life on the Red Planet.
There is currently water on the surface of Mars, Nasa scientists believe. The evidence is contained in pictures taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which is in orbit around the Red Planet.
Despite being a cold, arid world, Mars shows signs of liquid water seeping to its surface, according to NASA scientists quoted in news reports. Looking at images snapped by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, researchers have detected evidence of springs on the surface, USAToday reported Wednesday. The discovery could focus on the Valles Marineris region, a gigantic canyon that dominates the planetary landscape, according to NASA Watch, an independent Web site that monitors the space agency.
The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has found evidence that water has seeped out of the walls of martian craters in the recent geologic past, a process that possibly continues today. One Mars specialist, who did not wish to be identified, said that if true, the findings would "cause big problems" for planetary geologists.
It is generally accepted that early in its history immense floods of water resulted in substantial erosional landforms being created across Mars. However, what happened to this water remains a mystery.
NASAs Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft recently snapped two images of Mars that illustrate the seasonal variations that the planet undergoes. Mars tilts approximately 25 degrees on its axis, or about one degree more than Earth. Much like our planet, this tilt helps give rise to its annual climatic variations, or seasons.
Planetary scientists and geologists from the U.K., together with several guest speakers from the United States and Europe, will be gathering in Manchester to discuss 'Water on Mars'. This one day symposium, to be held on Monday 17th April, is part of the four day GeoScience 2000 meeting at the University of Manchester.
The 31st Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference came back to the subject of Mars. A focus of discussion were the first detailed results from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft -- an important instrument whose data has taken longer to analyze properly than that from the craft's other instruments.
In recent years scientists have used seismographs to sort out subsurface sound waves from earthquakes. But what causes the hum, which researchers call the background-free oscillation, has been a mystery. Because Mars and Venus are also solid bodies with atmospheres they are probably humming too, creating a miniature symphony in space.
Images taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have revealed new evidence of a fiendish martian phenomenon: dust devils.
A gravitational map of Mars reveals that water-filled rivers once ran across the Red Planet's northern hemisphere, researchers say. "Evidence is building of more water on the surface of Mars at one time," said planetary scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the study. The researchers combined laser measurements of Martian topography with a gravitational analysis provided by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft to depict the shape and thickness of the planet's crust.
Some of Mars' best kept secrets, long buried beneath the surface of the Red Planet, have been revealed by instruments on Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft.
Armed with a combination of detailed maps of Mars' gravity patterns and high-resolution topography maps of the planet's surface, a team of scientists has calculated the rough shape and thickness of the martian crust.
Detailed measurements of sulfur isotopes in five Martian meteorites have enabled researchers at the University of California, San Diego to determine that the abundant sulfur on the surface of Mars is due largely to chemical reactions in the Red Planet's atmosphere that are similar to those that occur in Earth's atmosphere.
Signs of martian snowfall, avalanches, "dust devils" and evidence for ancient oceans from the Mars Global Surveyor are profoundly changing how scientists perceive the Red Planet. It's a far cry from the dry and dead world imagined by previous generations.
Robert Poreda, a University of Rochester geochemist will spend three weeks camping in a tent in Antarctica taking water samples as part of his research on climate change and Earth's geological processes. Of all the places on Earth, the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica is the place most similar to that of Mars.
Icy rivers thunder through steep canyons. Floodwaters spill out of lakebeds. Rushing streams drag house-size boulders and carve long, sinuous channels. To these images of what Mars may have looked like some 2 billion years ago, when it was warmer and wetter than today, scientists can now add a seascape.
Scientists studying polar areas of Mars have found features that might once have been an ancient coastline.
Scientists studying polar areas of Mars have found features that might once have been an ancient coastline. The theory that the Red Planet once had water has long been of interest to scientists, and a group led by James W. Head III of Brown University searched data collected by Mars Global Surveyor for confirmation.
In an article to be published in Science magazine Dec. 10, 1999, Brown University planetary geologist James Head and five colleagues present topographical measurements which they say are consistent with an ocean that dried up hundreds of millions of years ago. The measurements were taken by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, an instrument aboard the unmanned spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor which is circling the planet.
The vast lowlands that cover most of Mars' northern hemisphere have long posed an interesting puzzle for scientists: Dry river channels that appear to have carried more water than the greatest rivers on Earth run into a wide empty basin that is exceedingly flat and apparently dry.
James Head, a Brown University planetary geologist, is the lead investigator on a team of scientists that has found evidence supporting the presence of an ancient ocean on Mars. The team received topographical data from the unmanned Mars Global Surveyor that they say is consistent with a former ocean.
Since the days of the ancient Egyptians, the planet Mars has been associated with one color and one color only in the popular imagination: Red.
Why should Mars have so little atmosphere when Venus and Earth have so much? Though it might simply have been born that way, there are plenty of hints that the atmosphere was once much thicker -- the evidence of water, for example.
As scientists studied the pictures from Mars sent back by the Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover, the world heard some surprisingly down-to-Earth names: Stimpy, Yogi and Scooby Doo.
Larry Lebofsky, a research scientist at the University of Arizona, has spent some time building model volcanoes and looking through 3-D glasses. The point, he says is not to engage in a "cute activity" but rather to show science teachers how to make planetary astronomy relevant to students' everyday lives.
High-resolution images from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have concluded there is no evidence of shorelines that would have surrounded former oceans on Mars. The result will trigger debate about the possibility of water having existed on Mars in the past. At the moment the atmospheric pressure is too low to allow liquid water to exist on the surface. But if Mars had a thicker atmosphere in the past , water could have survived.
Scientists at Malin Space Science Systems have used high resolution images of Mars taken with the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on Mars Global Surveyor to test the hypothesis that oceans once covered much of the northern hemisphere of Mars.
As if to show that the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft last week was just a relatively minor setback in the exploration of the Red Planet, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) has just celebrated two years in orbit by sending back some stunning new pictures. MGS has imaged one of the largest volcanoes not just on Mars but anywhere in the Solar System, Arsia Mons.
A patch of frost near Mars south polar cap caught the eye of an Ohio astronomer 150 years ago staring through a telescope at the red planet. Now the frosty strip has showed up again in a recent image taken by NASA's Mars orbiter, and it still has scientists puzzling over why it hasn't melted away.
It is generally accepted that early in its history immense floods of water resulted in substantial erosional landforms being created across Mars. However, what happened to this water remains a mystery.
When the Mars Pathfinder return its cache of stunning images back in 1997, nobody was looking for dust devils, those swirling vortices of fine particles now thought to be a primary cause of the Red Planet's severely hazy atmosphere.
Peering down through stormy Martian skies, a NASA spacecraft has found tree-like shapes dotting the red planet's south pole. But what appears to be rolling hills covered with vegetation are most likely sand dunes topped with melting frost, scientists said Tuesday. The latest images from the $250 million Mars Global Surveyor that has been mapping the planet since March offer new insight into the weather there.
Mars is covered with Earth-sized sand dunes that remain active to this day, scientists said Tuesday. The dunes resemble those in California's Mojave Desert and could be dusted with snow,
Newly released images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show that the red planet is a different place today than it was two years ago when the spacecraft arrived -- a world constantly reshaped by forces of nature including shifting sand dunes, monster dust devils, wind storms, frosts and polar ice caps that grow and retreat with the seasons.
The latest images of the NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show a springtime scene - a first-time glimpse of ice retreating from the southern polar cap. Though the Surveyor has been mapping the planet for the last few months, the southern polar cap has been shrouded in darkness.
Ghosts of water -- past and present -- haunt a new set of photographs taken by NASA's Mars orbiter and released Monday in conjunction with a major conference for red planet researchers.
Just-released photos from Mars underscore the diversity of the red planet's surface. The photos, captured by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, were released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the spacecraft's camera. Global Surveyor has been in orbit around Mars since 1997.
Researchers have known for some time that Mars has a deep dent in its southern hemisphere. Until recent measurements yielded a highly accurate, global map of the red planet's topography, they didn't know that the Hellas basin could swallow Mt. Everest, or that the asteroid that caused the crater hurtled debris as far as 2,500 miles across the planet's surface.
The robot spacecraft that is orbiting Mars is giving scientists a better map of that planet than they have for some features of Earth, such as parts of Africa and South America. Scientists said Thursday that NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has sent back its first topographical measurements. They show a heavily cratered southern hemisphere that is three miles higher than the smooth, northern hemisphere.
An impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris highlight a global map of Mars that will influence scientific understanding of the Red Planet for years.
An impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris are among the highlights revealed on the first three-dimensional map of the surface of Mars.
We now have a better view of Mars than we do of some parts of the Earth thanks to a spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) has produced the first detailed map of the planet's surface.
An impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris highlight a global map of Mars that will influence scientific understanding of the red planet for years.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an enormous cyclonic storm system raging in the northern polar regions of the planet Mars. Nearly four times the size of the state of Texas, the storm is composed of water ice clouds like storm systems on Earth, rather than dust typically found in Martian storms.
A cyclonic storm system four times the size of Texas swirled across the northern polar region of Mars last month, the Space Telescope Science Institute said Wednesday.
The Red Planet has intrigued humanity for more than 3,000 years. The ancient Babylonians and Romans named it for their gods. A 19th-century astronomer caused an international uproar when he said he found "canals" on its surface.
The rocks on Mars contain the magnetic imprint left by large-scale surface movements millions of years ago, according to a team of US and French researchers.
Magnetic stripes on the surface of Mars are similar to fields in the sea floors of Earth and may indicate ancient crustal movements on the Red Planet.
New information from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft suggests the barren planet once had geology like that of Earth, with a torrid interior spurting molten rock and massive plates drifting on the surface.
The discovery of magnetic strips across the face of Mars suggests the barren planet once had geology like that of Earth, with a torrid interior spurting molten rock and massive plates drifting on the surface.
It may be summer in the northern hemisphere on Mars, but the Mars Global Surveyor captured this view of some persisting frost or snow on a small crater. These snow fields are so small that a human could walk across one of them in a matter of minutes. In winter, which ended 8 months ago on Mars, the entire scene shown here would be covered by frost.
New images of Martian terrain taken by the Mars Global Surveyor promise to give scientists insights into the red planet's geological history, NASA said Thursday.
New photos from the Mars Global Surveyor show that horizontal layers extend deep into the canyons of Mars. The structure and composition of the layers suggest that volcanism played a far greater role in the early geology of the Red Planet than previously believed, scientists report in the February 18 issue of Nature.
Volcanic activity could occur on Mars today, scientists have concluded, from the most recent analysis of images sent back by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). The images cast new light on Mars's most recent and most distant past.
Mars still shows the scars of primeval floods and channels cut billions of years ago when the planet was warmer and wetter. But are there any signs of rain? Geologist Michael Malin, who has studied hundreds of pictures of the Red Planet, sees none of the telltale signs that should be left behind by ancient rainfall. And therein lies a mystery.
The surface of Mars shows the scars of a wetter and warmer past when great floods raced over its surface. But there has always been one question about this picture: where did the water come from?
Images sent back to Earth by the Mars Global Surveyor (Mgs) have given scientists a glimpse into the events that take place at the north pole when vast tracts of sand dunes become covered in frost.
The Martian hills are alive with the sounds of ... what? Wind, sandstorms, lightning? No one yet knows what we may hear or even whether there will be sounds on Mars, but we may have the answer within one year.
A space-borne laser has produced the first three-dimensional view of Mars' North Pole. This has enabled scientists to estimate the volume of water in the ice cap and speculate that much of the planet's original water is either hidden below the surface or missing.
The Mars Global Surveyor has found the first evidence that lava solidified into giant plates long ago on the Red Planet and that sand dunes were blowing around as recently as this past summer.
Flash floods unlike anything seen on Earth may have once ravaged the surface of Mars, according to new data. The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, in orbit around the red planet for more than a year, has sent back images that show just how violent some periods in Mars' past may have been.
Mars is a planet of natural violence far greater than is known on Earth, with winds gusting to 350 mph and evidence of immense floods that swamped vast areas.
The last images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft until next year show the arrival of spring at the planet's frozen north pole. And they reveal what a strange place it must be.
Rethinking The C1 Carbonaceous Chondrite Standard. New analysis of data from the Mars Pathfinder Mission has revived a nagging question that was first posed nearly 50 years ago: why do the inner planets exhibit different mean densities when presumably they formed from the same material? The new analysis, performed at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, suggests that one current theory explaining density variations is wrong, and that future modelers of inner solar system accretion must account for a set of inner planets with differing elemental compositions.
Like the Earth, Mars appears to have a crust, a mantle and an iron core, signs that the planet may once have been warm, Mars Pathfinder scientists announced today. They got their first strong evidence that the planet is not merely a solid ball of rock by measuring the changes in radio signals from Pathfinder as Mars spins on its axis.