The Jet Propulsion Lab is truly covering Mars. The rover Opportunity, a golf cart-size machine on the surface, reached the Endeavor Crater. Opportunity has now driven more than twenty miles, over 50 times the original goal, since reaching Mars in 2004.
According to Matthew Golombek, a scientist on the Rover team, Opportunity will “sample a rock type the rovers haven’t seen yet. Clay minerals form in wet conditions so we may learn about a potentially habitable environment that appears to have been very different from those responsible for the rocks comprising the plains.”
Space agency scientists and Indiana University believe underground habitats are plausible. They believe that in the permafrost regions below the surface, frozen pockets of saltwater might hold unfrozen drops that could harbor organisms. Analogous phenomena occur on Earth.
The search continues.
On August 4, the space agency announced a possible water flow down a Martian slope. Data collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows dark flows extending from the Newton Crater as spring turns to summer. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona thinks it’s saltwater. “The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water.” He believes that ice at the top of the slope melts as spring thaws the Martian surface, and water flows down the slope in summer.
Unfortunately, spectrometer data showed no signs of water, so the mystery remains. Any water might sublimate or vaporize into the atmosphere.
SOURCES
Courtesy National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Jet Propulsion Lab
NASA Mars Rover Arrives at New Site on Martian Surface, August 10, 2011, Jet Propulsion Lab site
NASA’s Opportunity Tops 20 Miles of Mars Driving, July 19, 2011, Jet Propulsion Lab site
Plausible Martian Habitats, August 4, 2011, Mars Exploration Program
NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing On Mars, August 4, 2011, Jet Propulsion Lab site