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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 07.12.04 12:18l 106 Lines 5025 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Press release, 2nd December
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Sent: 041207/1001Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:53300 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-280
December 02, 2004
Reports Detail Rover Discoveries of Wet Martian History
The most dramatic findings so far from NASA's twin Mars rovers --
telltale evidence for a wet and possibly habitable environment in the
arid planet's past -- passed rigorous scientific scrutiny for
publication in a major research journal.
Eleven reports by 122 authors in Friday's issue of the journal Science
present results from Opportunity's three-month prime mission, fleshing
out headline discoveries revealed earlier.
Opportunity bounced to an airbag-cushioned landing on Jan. 24. It is
exploring a region called Meridiani Planum, halfway around Mars from
where its twin, Spirit, landed three weeks earlier. Sedimentary rocks
Opportunity examined, "clearly preserve a record of environmental
conditions different from any on Mars today," report 50 rover-team
scientists led by Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
and Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
"Liquid water was once intermittently present at the martian surface at
Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface. Because liquid
water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer conditions at Meridiani
may have been habitable for some period of time in martian history,"
according to Squyres, Arvidson and other co-authors.
"Formal review and publication this week of these amazing discoveries
further strengthens the need for continued exploration by orbiters,
surface robots, sample-return missions and human explorers. There are
more exciting discoveries awaiting us on the red planet," said Dr.
Michael Meyer, chief scientist for Mars exploration at NASA
Headquarters, Washington.
Opportunity and Spirit have driven a combined 5.75 kilometers (3.57
miles), nearly five times their mission-success goal. They continue in
good health after operating more than three times as long as the
three-month prime missions for which they were designed.
NASA's rover team makes the resulting scientific discoveries available
quickly to the public and the science community. One type of evidence
that Meridiani was wet is the composition of rocks there.
The rocks have a high and variable ratio of bromine to chlorine;
indicating "the past presence of large amounts of water," write Dr. Rudi
Rieder and Dr. Ralf Gellert of Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry,
Mainz, Germany, and co-authors. Their paper and another by Dr. Phil
Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, and collaborators report
an abundance of sulfur-rich minerals in the rocks, another clue to a
watery past. Clinching the case is identification of a hydrated
iron-sulfate salt called jarosite in the rocks, as reported by Dr.
Goestar Klingelhoefer of the University of Mainz, and Dr. Richard Morris
of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, and co-authors.
Structures within the rocks add more evidence according to Dr. Ken
Herkenhoff of the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz., and
co-authors. Plentiful cavities, about the size of shirt buttons,
indicate crystals formed inside the rocks then dissolved. Minerals
carried by water formed peppercorn-size gray spheres, nicknamed
"blueberries," that are embedded in the rocks. Certain angled patterns
of fine layers in some rocks tell experts a flowing body of surface
water shaped the sediments that became the rocks.
Several characteristics of the rocks suggest water came and went
repeatedly, as it does in some shallow lakes in desert environments on
Earth. That fluctuation, plus the water's possible high acidity and
saltiness, would have posed challenges to life, but not necessarily
insurmountable ones, according to researchers. If life ever did exist at
Meridiani, the type of rocks found there could be good preservers of
fossils, according to Squyres, Dr. John Grotzinger of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and co-authors.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has managed the Mars
Exploration Rover project since it began in 2000. Images and additional
information about the rovers and their discoveries are available on the
Internet at:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer_main.html
Information about NASA and agency programs is available on the Web at:
http://www.nasa.gov .
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73, Alan
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