NASA's "significant" Mars announcement!

[JackHiggins]

I'm surpried I didn't see it posted here already...

NASA are holding a press conference at their Washington, D.C. headquarters at 2pm EST (That's 7pm GMT/UTC, check Celestia for your local time zone... ) where they will be making a "significant announcement" about results from Opportunity.

No leaks yet, (which is good) but the BBC are reporting that it may be related to current water on Mars, and apparently everyone out in JPL is very excited about it.

I'm betting its either current water in the trenches (why else fly everyone over to D.C. for a press conference) or fossilised life in the bedrock Opportunity's been looking at recently.

Either way, prepare to be amazed!

If, like me, you don't live in the U.S and don't know whether your local news station will be carrying the press briefing live, you can view NASA TV on realplayer here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

More details on the pre-announcement can be found at http://www.space.com and http://www.spaceflightnow.com

[ElPelado]

Maybe it is related to the small spheres the rover found there... maybe something else... I dont know what it is, but I am very excited about it...
I JUST CAN'T WAIT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS!!!

[ElPelado]

I think that we are all hearing to the conference now...
They found that in Oportunity's landing site there was liquid water once...
CONGRATULATIONS NASA AND JPL!

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3524275.stm

[ElPelado]

The crazy thing is that when it landed I said to my self: "there are no rocks on this place, what the h*ll will the rover do there? what a waste of money!"
It havent left it landing place and it have found more and more important things than spirit did in all of "it's" rocks...


BTW: does anybody know if spirit was or not in Sleepy Hollow???

[JackHiggins]

I'm a little underwhelmed, I must say- definitive evidence of past water is really cool, but I thought itd be something more...!

No, Spirit never went to sleepy hollow- after the computer problems it was thought that it should head staright for bonneville crater, since it would provide better science than the tiny hole that was sleepy hollow.

[ElPelado]

I know, but maybe the water is still underground...
Its like that discover it self doesnt mean anything, but it can help discovering very important things in the future...

[JackHiggins]

I've always believed that there is still some kind of microbial life on Mars- we now KNOW for sure that at least in one place (in other words we know that in lots of places) there once was water. On earth (which is the ONLY system we know about where life exists) Water = Life, anywhere you go.
So I reckon it's a pretty safe bet that

a) Life once lived on Mars
b) There's still subsurface water there, where this life could still exist.

When Mars express starts using it's subsurface radar booms soon, we should get some idea of what is really down there.

[eburacum45]

It looks like Mars' surface is freeze dried; all those salt deposits speak of lost water... but if you read David Catlings essay on Mars' atmosphere
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~davidc ... sAtmos.pdf
you will see that much of the water may well be still there, underground;

since the end of the Noachian period, a half billion year long era during which Mars had a thick atmosphere, perhaps half of Mars water has been lost to space;

which means half will still be there, deep underground.