Mars rover reaches Endeavour crater, finds signs of ancient Martian water

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/05/the-opportunity-rover-endeavours-to-find-signs-of-ancient-martian-water.ars

by evo_9 • 14 years ago

100 22 14 years ago

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Another nail in the 'dry Mars' hypothesis. Fascinating stuff of course, it will get really interesting when Curiosity gets there. Looking forward to that!

planetguy3• 14 years ago

The "dry Mars" hypothesis has been dead for decades. At this point we have about as much evidence for water on Mars as we have for water on Earth.

The media is always keen on every new "omg, there was once water on Mars" discovery, but we've moved on to trying to figure out the details; where, when, how much, where did it go?

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

I thought we figured that out - it disappeared (vaporized) as the planet got closer to the sun and slowed down in spinning...

That said, I'm impressed at Opportunity - this rover is just as sturdy as the Voyagers - I hope Curiosity is just as well built and lands safely...

MartinCron• 14 years ago

At this point we have about as much evidence for water on Mars as we have for water on Earth

Be careful with language like that. Sloppy journalists might turn that into a "we need to balance both sides of the story" and we'll wind up with people denying the existence of water on Earth.

mmukhin• 14 years ago

Woooow. Makes you think twice about panspermia theory, being descendants of Martians.. (latter is Neil Tyson comment)

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

>Over seven years into its (originally) 90-day mission, the Mars rover Opportunity arrived at the rim of Endeavour Crater.

This is absolutely amazing engineering. I would love to see NASA double down on robotic exploration (and mining) of the solar system for the next decade or two.

Really advance the state of art of robotics, make discoveries that would be extremely difficult and costly for people to do, and get many more missions per/dollar than a manned program could.

InclinedPlane4• 14 years ago

They're certainly trying. The Mars Curiosity rover will be capable of amazing feats. Unfortunately, the JWST has been chewing up a lot of the space science budget at NASA lately, and will continue to do so for a few years.

chucknelson• 14 years ago

Also good. Let's just hope some sort of space science budget continues to exist. Hopefully one day it will start to grow.

pvarangot• 14 years ago

>This is absolutely amazing engineering.

It was also luck.

The rovers had their power requirements and solar panels designed so that 90 days of mission could pass before getting occluded by martian dust. Once on Mars NASA discovered that occasional whirlwinds, which existence was unknown during mission planing, cleaned the panels back to usable current output levels.

aggie• 14 years ago

Serious question: why not have wiper blades?

I'm having a hard time accepting we can land a rover on another planet, but we can't find a way to clean some dust off of it.

bane• 14 years ago

Something to think about, possibly good or bad. If these rovers hadn't had such longevity, would have had other rovers on Mars in the meantime? If so, would they have been more capable? Or have these rovers represented such tremendously cost effective experiments that we're getting what we would have gotten with other rovers, but saved on launch and opportunity costs (awaiting transit to Mars, possible mission failures, etc.)?

mturmon• 14 years ago

No, there would not have been other rovers on Mars in the meantime. There were no rovers in development between MER (Spirit and Opportunity) and MSL (which is now en route to Mars).

There's a lot riding on MSL landing safely, because there's nothing solid after MSL right now. There used to be a 2018 rover, but it was recently cancelled.

sanxiyn• 14 years ago

Recommended reading for Mars rover fans: a diary of a Mars rover driver.

http://marsandme.blogspot.com/

Mars rover reaches Endeavour crater, finds signs of ancient Martian water

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