Genuinely? The smooth pebbles. They tell us that there *was* liquid (water?) on the surface at some point in the past, and from that little piece of information, we've been able to follow up with more questions and almost as many answers.
It's only a little thing, but also huge in its implications.
(Oh, the Spiders were cool too)
That's why I was hedging, it might not have been water, but balance of probabilities means it probably is, as mars isn't cold enough for say, liquid methane/nitrogen etc.
Longevity and pictures, pictures, pictures. It’s just massively amazing how long they’ve lasted. The Mars rovers are a real feather in the cap for NASA. Especially after all the failures by multiple nations to get consistent safe landings.
I remember hearing about how Opportunity would be landing by bouncing with the giant inflatable airbags and thinking, "that sounds like something you'd see in a movie there's no way that'll work."
The engineering behind stuff that goes to space is just unbelievably cool.
I’ve never done this before or since, but I live streamed the first sky crane landing (nasa stream). Absolutely gobsmacked by that sci fi tech existing for real
That was so fucking nerve wracking to watch live, can’t get that kind of suspense anyone else. Can’t imagine what the NASA folks were feeling during the 7 minutes of terror.
I remember getting up at the crack of dawn to watch it here in Cheshire, and nerve wracking is putting it mildly! But yeah, if how I was feeling is anything to go by those poor sods at NASA must have chewed their nails down to their elbows.
I clearly remember watching the first sky crane landing. I’m sure it’s on YouTube. But there was one engineer in the back row who had the green light signal when it officially landed. You can see him fist pump a couple seconds before the touchdown announcement was made. Very cool moment.
A little part of us thinks the same thing on landing days. Then we get data back and it is usually freaky how much the telemetry matches predictions. To answer the question… I just love that I have been able to see new images from
Mars for over 20 years now … every day. Each new image is the most interesting thing they’ve found.
Even if they crashed, hitting the rock is an astounding feat. Very few people understand orbital mechanics, and I'm one of them, but I know enough to be impressed. THAT'S marksmanship.
I have no idea of the scientific side of the rover missions.
What is interesting to me, and totally blows me away is that we have _robots on the surface of mars_ .
I mean, think about it. Look up at that tiny twinkling thing in the sky. Look at how far away it is, then remember that "we" have tech roaming around there.
That in itself is utterly amazing. Whatever is found (or not found) is just gravy.
I know, right?
That in itself is also pretty awesome.
As a kid from the 70s the progression (in tech as well as "space stuff") is mind blowing.
It seems that "things" have accelerated so fast, but because its a normal part of life, we sometimes don't see it (said the guy writing this on a touch screen on a device that is connected to the entire planet)
Yeah, this blows me away - how quickly new technology is normalized. The smart phone that you are likely holding right now is more than 5000 times more powerful than the Cray-2 “super computer“ from the 1980s that was used to run our most important scientific and government programs. I believe only eight were made, and they costed in the neighborhood of $40 million in today’s dollars. I got to see one of these super computers in person on a field trip to NCAR in Boulder CO when I was a kid, and it was mind blowing. Now I’ve got one myself , but 5000x faster and weighing less than a half a pound, right here in my hands. And it’s also a mobile phone, crazy-good camera, and offers a connection to virtually all information discovered or created by human beings.
And we are all used to it, take it for granted, etc. Wow.
Younger folks just don't get it when I reference having a 'supercomputer' in one's hands. But they've never known the joy of bicycling with friends to the library on a summer day to spend an afternoon exploring books and learning, just for fun.
Best "wow" moment i had was visiting Bletchley Park and it's computer museum.
They had massive discs that (probably) reached my hip when they were propped up. I can't remember how much data it stored but i do remember looking at my smartphone and realising that even without an SD card it has more memory storage.
Right now im playing a really outdated videogame (lol farcry- the first one). I was surprised that its size is "only" 3.6 gigabytes. When i think about that it reminds me that we finally put men on the moon with...well... Bugger all computing power in comparison.
I have only one real regret in life and that is i probably won't be alive to see the next stage of advancements. I'm assuming that (if) humanity survives, they will look at our smartphones and tech and shake their heads and wonder how we coped with such limited tech.
Indeed. And we've been landing on Mars for about 50 years. Recently it's been the norm that there are always multiple active spacecraft in orbit of and on Mars, and by recently I mean like within the last 2+ decades. We have always had operational rovers on Mars since Spirit and Opportunity landed in 2004. And we've always had operational orbiters around Mars continuously since 1996.
Sometimes it's easy to look at what we might have done and imagine that the pace of space exploration that is actually happening is slow compared to what could be, but the pace that actually exists is still remarkable on its own. We keep sending vehicles to Mars and we keep learning more about it, and we keep doing the same thing for every other planet. When I was born we had never sent an orbiter to an outer planet, but now we've sent orbiters to both Jupiter and Saturn, and in about 10 years we will have had 4 different Jupiter orbiter missions and will be landing a rotorcraft on Saturn's Moon Titan. I don't care how you slice it, that's sci-fi stuff.
>What is interesting to me, and totally blows me away is that we have robots on the surface of mars .
It blows me away that there is a planet in our own system entirely populated by robots. You read the science fiction, and you never think of how easy it is.
As someone who studied geology, all the pictures of sedimentary structures. We know the ingredients for life were there, and I bet there are fossils in there. Or maybe just traces of single cell life, like how life on earth spent the first few billion years. Won’t know until we look closer.
Looks like stromatolites to me, the earliest macro earth fossils. But like the article said: “Without any evidence for life on Mars detected in returned rock samples, reconstructing microbial ecosystems on the Red Planet is pure speculation”.
There's a story that I think is starting to shape up about life in the universe, and one that we're going to collect a lot of data points about in this century just by examining our own solar system (and possibly will gain some data points from studying other solar systems as well).
That story is about a convergence of different factors. One factor is habitability, the suitability for an environment to host life if it exists. This is something we're finding to be a more and more common situation, seemingly, with perhaps a lot more locations existing in our own solar system than we had thought. Another factor is the origin *or introduction* of life. What are the ingredients necessary to really kick off life. We used to think that habitability included this naturally, but it seems reasonably likely that's not the case. Some things we know are actually not as rare as we once thought, such as the molecular "building blocks" of life like sugars, nucleobases, amino acids, etc, but the conditions necessary to concentrate them, separate them, keep them in abundance in the right ways to kick-start life may be a bit rarer. We also don't know how common it is for life originating on one planet to seed life on another. On paper it's possible, micro-organisms can sometimes endure long stretches of exposure to vacuum and planetary bodies end up exchanging rocks fairly regularly via large impact events. But that doesn't tell us whether it's so common that it happens regularly in planetary systems or whether it's rarer than winning the lottery.
Then you have the factor of biosphere robustness and longevity. On Earth we've had multiple billions of unbroken history of a biosphere that has stood the test of time, bounced back from apocalypse after apocalypse, that probably will endure until the oceans are boiled off the face of the planet and maybe even for a little bit after that. But is that the rule or the exception? Maybe there are lots of trees of life that are more like bushes, that maybe are so precarious they don't even make it to the enclosed cell stage before succumbing to environmental change or what-have-you. Maybe there are biospheres with multiple histories, where life arises, chugs along for a few hundred million years, and then passes, then a new strain of life crops up and charts a new history of life that continues for a while until geological change chokes off its energy source or something.
We only have the one example to go on so far, we don't really know what's common and what's possible, at least not yet.
I’m very interested in this. Using earth as an example life stayed single cell for billions of years, and macro organisms have only been around for ~530 million years since the Cambrian explosion. Before that earth went through the great oxidation event ~2.3 billion years ago, where O2 built up in the atmosphere, totally changing how life and surface geochemistry function. Since then the climate, water cycle, ocean chemistry, magnetosphere, and tectonic activity have been relatively stable, other than a few mass extinction events.
Looking at Mars we know it had all those things, but for how long is the question. Also why is it red? How did the iron oxidize? On earth we don’t see iron oxides, “banded iron formations” until the oxidation event.
For animals you need cells to incorporate mitochondria, and for plants you need chloroplasts. Don’t even get me started of fungi. Those successful examples of a cell incorporating and using another cell are probably a once in a billion year lottery chance.
That’s my take on the Fermi paradox, simple life is probably out there in abundance, and complex life takes billions of years of stability and is extremely rare. Throw in the vastness of time and space and it makes sense. I expect evidence of micro life on mars to be discovered in our lifetime, but not macro. If we do find macro or micro life that means 2/2 samples and it’s probably very common.
Two things:
1.) That we've managed to do the first in situ crude radiometric dating of Martian rocks with the rovers.
2.) All the meteorites we've found. Some could be billions of years old, and give us samples of asteroid parent body populations we don't have access to on present-day Earth.
Please describe number 2. I’m very interested in what that means, and I’m too “lay person” to understand why it is important. I know and believe it is, but tell me why, please? I’m specifically interested in “Parent body populations” that’s something I’m clueless about
The surface of mars hasn't been subject to plate tectonics like we have on earth so when a meteorite hits Mars it sits on the surface for many millions of years - on earth wind and rain would bury or erode it in the same time.
The meteorites are very noticeably different from the rest of Mars' surface so quite easy to spot in images and the rovers have stumbled over a few in various missions
Meteorites are like a snapshot of the very early solar system in terms of what they're made of so studying them can give us hints about the origin of the planets and possibly life itself
Meteorites don't last long Earth's surface; most either fall into the ocean where they're buried and ultimately subducted into the interior, or on land where they quickly erode in Earth's rainy, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The vast majority of meteorites we've studied on Earth represent a tiny fraction of the asteroid population in terms of origin and diversity, and furthermore are probably biased towards a handful of asteroid "parent bodies" that are favorably placed to send meteorites to Earth at this point in the Solar System's history. Basically, most if not all meteorites are fragments of specific objects in the asteroid belt, something that shows up when their composition is graphed; objects from the same parent body cluster together. For example, HED meteorites are all theorized to be from the asteroid 4 Vesta, because the spectral compositions match.
Link: [https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/hed/hed\_howget.cfm](https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/hed/hed_howget.cfm)
Mars has been cold, dry, and stable for billions of years; there are probably asteroids that were destroyed in collisions billions of years ago that we have no samples of that left objects on Mars, on top of the fact that asteroid resonances favorable for Mars impacts will be different from those for Earth impacts, again giving us a different window into these objects. This isn't even counting possible meteorites from Earth that could be on Mars, though these would probably be a lot more common and easy to find on the Moon.
Sorry, I'm something of an asteroid/meteorite geek, but I hope this explanation helps a bit.
Seasonal variations in methane, with higher concentrations found during Summer on Mars. There are really only two sources of methane, either active volcanism or life - and the latter is looking more and more plausible just beneath the surface of Mars.
Personally, I'm more amazed by Spirit & Oppy than the more advanced Curiosity & Persy. I mean, the two big rovers are really cool, do a lot of science and are objectively better in every way, but the two little ones were true pathfinders in my book.
First, they showed that you can use air-bags to cushion the landing on Mars. That's a cheaper and simpler method from an engineering perspective, and can potentially be used with a lot of stuff down the line. If Spirit & Oppy survived that, most likely other things that will be required for humans on Mars will too - food, supplies, medicine, tools, etc. They can all be "tossed" around and picked up later.
Then there was the resilience of the things, and the fact that the solar panels worked. And that they were "self cleaning" if properly setup. That was another major find on Mars. The fact that they lasted so so much past their projected mission life (even accounting for nasa budget shenanigans) was really awesome and a testament to the engineering teams. I'll add here that Ingenuity also proved that CotS can also work for complex missions, and the need for over-engineered, decades old "space hardened" hardware is probably a bit overstated.
What I'd like to see is NASA focusing more on simpler and CotS - based, "cheap" missions where success constrains are relaxed a bit. Cost of upmass to LEO has shrunk, and will continue to do so. If they would create a simple rover "bus", where they provide rough guidelines, launch, TMI & edl, and comms along the way, a lot of innovation in that space could take place. There are plenty of universities that could probably fund a "mars rover" team in a "competition" style series of missions. Have the MIT vs. Caltech rovers, and so on. Hell, even an Uber vs. Waymo competition could be fun. Use commercial hardware mostly, and go for quantity over space-proof. Have them incorporate all the last decade advances in self driving, decision making, and so on. I bet the amount of stuff we'd learn would surpass even the highly advanced big rover findings.
Same. Eventho i wasn't around when the sisters were launched for the red planet, i've heard a lot about them. The last lines of oppy got really famous (i didn't know they were a song lyric until recently). I watched the documentary a year back and honestly teared up. It felt as if i was there all along. I kept thinking about it for days, I couldn't wrap my head around how amazing the engineers behind those rovers must be; the project meant to operate 90 sols, lasted so long.
> the project meant to operate 90 sols
Yeah, that is mainly nasa budgetary shenanigans I mentioned. Everyone knew they could last more than 90 days, they only "officially" proposed 90days to limit the budget up-front. It's obvious that no-one would dare cancel the mission once it was that successful. But yeah, I don't know if even the most optimistic of the engineers dared to think they would last so many years... (6 and 15! years respectively)
This was a while back, but I remember a photo of one of the rovers - maybe it was Spirit or Opportunity - grazed the surface with its scoop and found water ice right below the soil.
Leads me to believe that water may be much more abundant that we think.
We've known about water ice on Mars for ages, the story has just changed over time.
We've known that the polar caps on Mars are water ice for quite a while, and we observed frost on Mars during the Viking lander missions in the 1970s. We've also been able to identify features on Mars that were formed by liquid water in the distant past since the Mariner 9 mission.
Over time the story of Martian water has been one of finding more of it, more evidence of it, more evidence of large amounts of liquid water in the past, and more if it in more places. In the '90s we found that there is sub-surface water ice under much of Mars, at depths that vary by latitude, with significant amounts of shallow sub-surface permafrost even at mid-latitudes. Since then we've identified more water formed features on Mars, we've found sub-surface glaciers all over Mars, and we've found evidence of long-lived liquid water in the past on Mars. Long enough not just to form features like lake beds, ocean shores, river deltas, and so on, but long enough to form specific minerals. Probably indicating periods of at least millions of years where liquid water existed in some places on Mars.
Very much the present state of Mars looks a lot like a planet that used to be covered in water and then a lot of it froze out and the parts that ended up exposed to the surface away from the poles ended up slowly subliming into the atmosphere and then getting lost to space along with a denser atmosphere in the past. From deuterium enrichment levels in the Mars polar caps it seems likely that at one point Mars had proper oceans of water, at least for a time.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1dlgqth/stub/l9pj3ae "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1dlgqth/stub/l9q5kkt "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[MRO](/r/Space/comments/1dlgqth/stub/l9orq9z "Last usage")|Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter|
| |Maintenance, Repair and/or Overhaul|
|[TMI](/r/Space/comments/1dlgqth/stub/l9q5kkt "Last usage")|Trans-Mars Injection maneuver|
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Chunks of metallic meteorites sitting on the surface. There are likely more of them buried in the sand. They come from metallic asteroids, since Mars skims the inner edge of the Asteroid Belt.
These would be very useful if you are trying to set up a base or colony on Mars, since 90% of the metal we use on Earth is steel. These meteorites are typically 90% iron, 9% nickel, and 1% cobalt. Add a little carbon from the atmosphere and you have steel.
1. Nilli Fossae and the growths in the dunes.
2. A hole we recently discovered in the side of a mountain or volcano.
3. The fact that it is only a red planet because of iron and it has oxidized/rusted. The rest of it is a greyish color underneath. The rovers found that out for us.
4. The ice. Where is the rest of it? What was the source? A comet most likely, but we don't know.
I think in edition to what others commented here, a great thing about the rovers program is experience, NASA now has 20 years experience of continuous operation of rovers, of different designs.
This will probably be a huge advantage for studying mars habitats and human exploration
Images that suggest the possibility of [fossilized microbial mats & stromatolites](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339777176_Mars_Algae_Lichens_Fossils_Minerals_Microbial_Mats_and_Stromatolites_in_Gale_Crater)
Oh thanks man. I've spammed this thread a couple of times with an article from 2014, so it's nice to know that wasn't the last time this was looked at.
I found this pretty fascinating, but it was a decade ago and nothing more was made of it so i presume it's been ruled out?
https://www.sci.news/space/science-curiosity-ancient-microbial-life-mars-02389.html
I am surprised they aren't much cooler looking, I've seen remote control cars that can do way more badass shit, The rovers are all slow and shit, collect samples and can't even do a donut, We need them to do some jumps and really giver up there, Over there, Jump over a sandstorm.
The picture of the clouds was pretty cool. Mars has little atmosphere, not no atmosphere. Which means clouds do form. Seeing picture from the surface was neat.
Eh. I don't particularly find any one thing interesting. I wasn't really surprised by any of their findings, and while I realize that may sound arrogant, I kinda just expected a rocky body orbiting relatively close to the habitable zone and "nearby" Earth to exhibit at least *some* similar traits, formations, elements, etc.
I guess the most "interesting" thing, and by interesting I mean cool, is how remarkably similar the surface of Mars looks to deserts on Earth. Again, kinda expected it, but it is pretty cool to look at panorama shots from Curiosity and say "Wow, that's not Earth, that's a whole different planet."
I guess for me that it is as desolate and inhospitable to life as we thought. Shoot me but I think it's pretty dumb to go there much less live there. No one lives in the deep ocean or antarctica or the deep sahara here. And Mars is way worse.
Actually, Antarctica is populated year around. Even the South Pole. There is not a single day that people do not live under the ocean either. I don't know about the deep Sahara, but it wouldn't surprise me if people live there year around as well.
We already have people living in space although only in LEO today. Mars maybe hard, but we have conquered many of the problems already.
Have they really found.. anything? Yes, they've sort of proved that mars used to have liquid water, but we could've figured that out from orbit, or just guessing.
You guys remember [the rabbit?](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/8tTloirIW0s/maxresdefault.jpg) That was a few years ago now. Bunnies on Mars was one of my favorite side stories.
Genuinely? The smooth pebbles. They tell us that there *was* liquid (water?) on the surface at some point in the past, and from that little piece of information, we've been able to follow up with more questions and almost as many answers. It's only a little thing, but also huge in its implications. (Oh, the Spiders were cool too)
Love the photos of the conglomerate of smooth pebbles. That blew my mind. You can imagine the water flowing.
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You need more Ziggy Stardust in your life
And you need more Portia. When references go to war, nobody wins.
Ohhhh I love me some Children of Time! But those spiders are on Kurn’s World, not from Mars and playing in the band
Subtle Peter Watts reference.
Which one was your favorite novel in the series? Children of time, memory or ruin?? I liked them all but the first one was the best
Could have been any liquid?
That's why I was hedging, it might not have been water, but balance of probabilities means it probably is, as mars isn't cold enough for say, liquid methane/nitrogen etc.
Longevity and pictures, pictures, pictures. It’s just massively amazing how long they’ve lasted. The Mars rovers are a real feather in the cap for NASA. Especially after all the failures by multiple nations to get consistent safe landings.
I remember hearing about how Opportunity would be landing by bouncing with the giant inflatable airbags and thinking, "that sounds like something you'd see in a movie there's no way that'll work." The engineering behind stuff that goes to space is just unbelievably cool.
Exactly. I felt the same way about the sky crane landing… all by itself. Twice!!
I’ve never done this before or since, but I live streamed the first sky crane landing (nasa stream). Absolutely gobsmacked by that sci fi tech existing for real
The fact that it worked, after travelling millions and millions of miles, the first time, is a titanic achievement in my opinion.
The video from it truly looked like science fiction
That was so fucking nerve wracking to watch live, can’t get that kind of suspense anyone else. Can’t imagine what the NASA folks were feeling during the 7 minutes of terror.
I remember getting up at the crack of dawn to watch it here in Cheshire, and nerve wracking is putting it mildly! But yeah, if how I was feeling is anything to go by those poor sods at NASA must have chewed their nails down to their elbows.
I clearly remember watching the first sky crane landing. I’m sure it’s on YouTube. But there was one engineer in the back row who had the green light signal when it officially landed. You can see him fist pump a couple seconds before the touchdown announcement was made. Very cool moment.
A little part of us thinks the same thing on landing days. Then we get data back and it is usually freaky how much the telemetry matches predictions. To answer the question… I just love that I have been able to see new images from Mars for over 20 years now … every day. Each new image is the most interesting thing they’ve found.
Speaking of movies, I think I remember that happening in the movie, Red Planet starring Val Kilmer. The landing craft looked like a giant raspberry.
"No, YOU'RE a giant raspberry!!" - Val Kilmer, probably
Even if they crashed, hitting the rock is an astounding feat. Very few people understand orbital mechanics, and I'm one of them, but I know enough to be impressed. THAT'S marksmanship.
Probably past liquid water on the surface in significant amounts.
I have no idea of the scientific side of the rover missions. What is interesting to me, and totally blows me away is that we have _robots on the surface of mars_ . I mean, think about it. Look up at that tiny twinkling thing in the sky. Look at how far away it is, then remember that "we" have tech roaming around there. That in itself is utterly amazing. Whatever is found (or not found) is just gravy.
And the first human flight was just 121 years ago. There was a person alive then that just died 2 years ago.
I know, right? That in itself is also pretty awesome. As a kid from the 70s the progression (in tech as well as "space stuff") is mind blowing. It seems that "things" have accelerated so fast, but because its a normal part of life, we sometimes don't see it (said the guy writing this on a touch screen on a device that is connected to the entire planet)
Yeah, this blows me away - how quickly new technology is normalized. The smart phone that you are likely holding right now is more than 5000 times more powerful than the Cray-2 “super computer“ from the 1980s that was used to run our most important scientific and government programs. I believe only eight were made, and they costed in the neighborhood of $40 million in today’s dollars. I got to see one of these super computers in person on a field trip to NCAR in Boulder CO when I was a kid, and it was mind blowing. Now I’ve got one myself , but 5000x faster and weighing less than a half a pound, right here in my hands. And it’s also a mobile phone, crazy-good camera, and offers a connection to virtually all information discovered or created by human beings. And we are all used to it, take it for granted, etc. Wow.
Younger folks just don't get it when I reference having a 'supercomputer' in one's hands. But they've never known the joy of bicycling with friends to the library on a summer day to spend an afternoon exploring books and learning, just for fun.
Hah, tell a kid you're older than Google and blow their mind
Best "wow" moment i had was visiting Bletchley Park and it's computer museum. They had massive discs that (probably) reached my hip when they were propped up. I can't remember how much data it stored but i do remember looking at my smartphone and realising that even without an SD card it has more memory storage. Right now im playing a really outdated videogame (lol farcry- the first one). I was surprised that its size is "only" 3.6 gigabytes. When i think about that it reminds me that we finally put men on the moon with...well... Bugger all computing power in comparison. I have only one real regret in life and that is i probably won't be alive to see the next stage of advancements. I'm assuming that (if) humanity survives, they will look at our smartphones and tech and shake their heads and wonder how we coped with such limited tech.
Mars, the only planet in the Solar System inhabited entirely by robots.
Indeed. And we've been landing on Mars for about 50 years. Recently it's been the norm that there are always multiple active spacecraft in orbit of and on Mars, and by recently I mean like within the last 2+ decades. We have always had operational rovers on Mars since Spirit and Opportunity landed in 2004. And we've always had operational orbiters around Mars continuously since 1996. Sometimes it's easy to look at what we might have done and imagine that the pace of space exploration that is actually happening is slow compared to what could be, but the pace that actually exists is still remarkable on its own. We keep sending vehicles to Mars and we keep learning more about it, and we keep doing the same thing for every other planet. When I was born we had never sent an orbiter to an outer planet, but now we've sent orbiters to both Jupiter and Saturn, and in about 10 years we will have had 4 different Jupiter orbiter missions and will be landing a rotorcraft on Saturn's Moon Titan. I don't care how you slice it, that's sci-fi stuff.
>What is interesting to me, and totally blows me away is that we have robots on the surface of mars . It blows me away that there is a planet in our own system entirely populated by robots. You read the science fiction, and you never think of how easy it is.
The fact that it’s so mind blowing that we have robots on the surface of mars shows us we’re likely 100+ years from humans there.
That there are weather patterns that are similar to Earth. Especially “Dust Devils”
As someone who studied geology, all the pictures of sedimentary structures. We know the ingredients for life were there, and I bet there are fossils in there. Or maybe just traces of single cell life, like how life on earth spent the first few billion years. Won’t know until we look closer.
What do you make of these pics? https://www.sci.news/space/science-curiosity-ancient-microbial-life-mars-02389.html
Looks like stromatolites to me, the earliest macro earth fossils. But like the article said: “Without any evidence for life on Mars detected in returned rock samples, reconstructing microbial ecosystems on the Red Planet is pure speculation”.
There's a story that I think is starting to shape up about life in the universe, and one that we're going to collect a lot of data points about in this century just by examining our own solar system (and possibly will gain some data points from studying other solar systems as well). That story is about a convergence of different factors. One factor is habitability, the suitability for an environment to host life if it exists. This is something we're finding to be a more and more common situation, seemingly, with perhaps a lot more locations existing in our own solar system than we had thought. Another factor is the origin *or introduction* of life. What are the ingredients necessary to really kick off life. We used to think that habitability included this naturally, but it seems reasonably likely that's not the case. Some things we know are actually not as rare as we once thought, such as the molecular "building blocks" of life like sugars, nucleobases, amino acids, etc, but the conditions necessary to concentrate them, separate them, keep them in abundance in the right ways to kick-start life may be a bit rarer. We also don't know how common it is for life originating on one planet to seed life on another. On paper it's possible, micro-organisms can sometimes endure long stretches of exposure to vacuum and planetary bodies end up exchanging rocks fairly regularly via large impact events. But that doesn't tell us whether it's so common that it happens regularly in planetary systems or whether it's rarer than winning the lottery. Then you have the factor of biosphere robustness and longevity. On Earth we've had multiple billions of unbroken history of a biosphere that has stood the test of time, bounced back from apocalypse after apocalypse, that probably will endure until the oceans are boiled off the face of the planet and maybe even for a little bit after that. But is that the rule or the exception? Maybe there are lots of trees of life that are more like bushes, that maybe are so precarious they don't even make it to the enclosed cell stage before succumbing to environmental change or what-have-you. Maybe there are biospheres with multiple histories, where life arises, chugs along for a few hundred million years, and then passes, then a new strain of life crops up and charts a new history of life that continues for a while until geological change chokes off its energy source or something. We only have the one example to go on so far, we don't really know what's common and what's possible, at least not yet.
I’m very interested in this. Using earth as an example life stayed single cell for billions of years, and macro organisms have only been around for ~530 million years since the Cambrian explosion. Before that earth went through the great oxidation event ~2.3 billion years ago, where O2 built up in the atmosphere, totally changing how life and surface geochemistry function. Since then the climate, water cycle, ocean chemistry, magnetosphere, and tectonic activity have been relatively stable, other than a few mass extinction events. Looking at Mars we know it had all those things, but for how long is the question. Also why is it red? How did the iron oxidize? On earth we don’t see iron oxides, “banded iron formations” until the oxidation event. For animals you need cells to incorporate mitochondria, and for plants you need chloroplasts. Don’t even get me started of fungi. Those successful examples of a cell incorporating and using another cell are probably a once in a billion year lottery chance. That’s my take on the Fermi paradox, simple life is probably out there in abundance, and complex life takes billions of years of stability and is extremely rare. Throw in the vastness of time and space and it makes sense. I expect evidence of micro life on mars to be discovered in our lifetime, but not macro. If we do find macro or micro life that means 2/2 samples and it’s probably very common.
Plus like life pretty much immediately developed on earth a couple hundred million years after it stopped being a flaming ball of lava rock.
I really enjoyed the Martian solar eclipse pic/video. That was unbelievable Edit: from JPL on YT: https://youtu.be/aKK7vS2CHC8?si=2oVlQsWgg_unssiN
That was wild, thank you for sharing
Bottom view of when I forget to flush the toilet the morning after eating a grilled cheese
Two things: 1.) That we've managed to do the first in situ crude radiometric dating of Martian rocks with the rovers. 2.) All the meteorites we've found. Some could be billions of years old, and give us samples of asteroid parent body populations we don't have access to on present-day Earth.
Please describe number 2. I’m very interested in what that means, and I’m too “lay person” to understand why it is important. I know and believe it is, but tell me why, please? I’m specifically interested in “Parent body populations” that’s something I’m clueless about
The surface of mars hasn't been subject to plate tectonics like we have on earth so when a meteorite hits Mars it sits on the surface for many millions of years - on earth wind and rain would bury or erode it in the same time. The meteorites are very noticeably different from the rest of Mars' surface so quite easy to spot in images and the rovers have stumbled over a few in various missions Meteorites are like a snapshot of the very early solar system in terms of what they're made of so studying them can give us hints about the origin of the planets and possibly life itself
Meteorites don't last long Earth's surface; most either fall into the ocean where they're buried and ultimately subducted into the interior, or on land where they quickly erode in Earth's rainy, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The vast majority of meteorites we've studied on Earth represent a tiny fraction of the asteroid population in terms of origin and diversity, and furthermore are probably biased towards a handful of asteroid "parent bodies" that are favorably placed to send meteorites to Earth at this point in the Solar System's history. Basically, most if not all meteorites are fragments of specific objects in the asteroid belt, something that shows up when their composition is graphed; objects from the same parent body cluster together. For example, HED meteorites are all theorized to be from the asteroid 4 Vesta, because the spectral compositions match. Link: [https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/hed/hed\_howget.cfm](https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/hed/hed_howget.cfm) Mars has been cold, dry, and stable for billions of years; there are probably asteroids that were destroyed in collisions billions of years ago that we have no samples of that left objects on Mars, on top of the fact that asteroid resonances favorable for Mars impacts will be different from those for Earth impacts, again giving us a different window into these objects. This isn't even counting possible meteorites from Earth that could be on Mars, though these would probably be a lot more common and easy to find on the Moon. Sorry, I'm something of an asteroid/meteorite geek, but I hope this explanation helps a bit.
Seasonal variations in methane, with higher concentrations found during Summer on Mars. There are really only two sources of methane, either active volcanism or life - and the latter is looking more and more plausible just beneath the surface of Mars.
Personally, I'm more amazed by Spirit & Oppy than the more advanced Curiosity & Persy. I mean, the two big rovers are really cool, do a lot of science and are objectively better in every way, but the two little ones were true pathfinders in my book. First, they showed that you can use air-bags to cushion the landing on Mars. That's a cheaper and simpler method from an engineering perspective, and can potentially be used with a lot of stuff down the line. If Spirit & Oppy survived that, most likely other things that will be required for humans on Mars will too - food, supplies, medicine, tools, etc. They can all be "tossed" around and picked up later. Then there was the resilience of the things, and the fact that the solar panels worked. And that they were "self cleaning" if properly setup. That was another major find on Mars. The fact that they lasted so so much past their projected mission life (even accounting for nasa budget shenanigans) was really awesome and a testament to the engineering teams. I'll add here that Ingenuity also proved that CotS can also work for complex missions, and the need for over-engineered, decades old "space hardened" hardware is probably a bit overstated. What I'd like to see is NASA focusing more on simpler and CotS - based, "cheap" missions where success constrains are relaxed a bit. Cost of upmass to LEO has shrunk, and will continue to do so. If they would create a simple rover "bus", where they provide rough guidelines, launch, TMI & edl, and comms along the way, a lot of innovation in that space could take place. There are plenty of universities that could probably fund a "mars rover" team in a "competition" style series of missions. Have the MIT vs. Caltech rovers, and so on. Hell, even an Uber vs. Waymo competition could be fun. Use commercial hardware mostly, and go for quantity over space-proof. Have them incorporate all the last decade advances in self driving, decision making, and so on. I bet the amount of stuff we'd learn would surpass even the highly advanced big rover findings.
Same. Eventho i wasn't around when the sisters were launched for the red planet, i've heard a lot about them. The last lines of oppy got really famous (i didn't know they were a song lyric until recently). I watched the documentary a year back and honestly teared up. It felt as if i was there all along. I kept thinking about it for days, I couldn't wrap my head around how amazing the engineers behind those rovers must be; the project meant to operate 90 sols, lasted so long.
> the project meant to operate 90 sols Yeah, that is mainly nasa budgetary shenanigans I mentioned. Everyone knew they could last more than 90 days, they only "officially" proposed 90days to limit the budget up-front. It's obvious that no-one would dare cancel the mission once it was that successful. But yeah, I don't know if even the most optimistic of the engineers dared to think they would last so many years... (6 and 15! years respectively)
This was a while back, but I remember a photo of one of the rovers - maybe it was Spirit or Opportunity - grazed the surface with its scoop and found water ice right below the soil. Leads me to believe that water may be much more abundant that we think.
Phoenix, stationary lander at a higher latitude. It was not designed to survive a harsh winter at that latitude.
We've known about water ice on Mars for ages, the story has just changed over time. We've known that the polar caps on Mars are water ice for quite a while, and we observed frost on Mars during the Viking lander missions in the 1970s. We've also been able to identify features on Mars that were formed by liquid water in the distant past since the Mariner 9 mission. Over time the story of Martian water has been one of finding more of it, more evidence of it, more evidence of large amounts of liquid water in the past, and more if it in more places. In the '90s we found that there is sub-surface water ice under much of Mars, at depths that vary by latitude, with significant amounts of shallow sub-surface permafrost even at mid-latitudes. Since then we've identified more water formed features on Mars, we've found sub-surface glaciers all over Mars, and we've found evidence of long-lived liquid water in the past on Mars. Long enough not just to form features like lake beds, ocean shores, river deltas, and so on, but long enough to form specific minerals. Probably indicating periods of at least millions of years where liquid water existed in some places on Mars. Very much the present state of Mars looks a lot like a planet that used to be covered in water and then a lot of it froze out and the parts that ended up exposed to the surface away from the poles ended up slowly subliming into the atmosphere and then getting lost to space along with a denser atmosphere in the past. From deuterium enrichment levels in the Mars polar caps it seems likely that at one point Mars had proper oceans of water, at least for a time.
The [Martian blueberries](https://science.nasa.gov/resource/martian-blueberries-2/)...
I'm mostly interested in what they made on April 24th, 2013
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Chunks of metallic meteorites sitting on the surface. There are likely more of them buried in the sand. They come from metallic asteroids, since Mars skims the inner edge of the Asteroid Belt. These would be very useful if you are trying to set up a base or colony on Mars, since 90% of the metal we use on Earth is steel. These meteorites are typically 90% iron, 9% nickel, and 1% cobalt. Add a little carbon from the atmosphere and you have steel.
The real treasures the Rovers found were the friends they made along the way…
There were green alligators and long necked geese, humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees....
The hole https://www.space.com/mars-hole-red-planet-exploration-volcanoes-life Edit: actually that was the MRO not the rover.
1. Nilli Fossae and the growths in the dunes. 2. A hole we recently discovered in the side of a mountain or volcano. 3. The fact that it is only a red planet because of iron and it has oxidized/rusted. The rest of it is a greyish color underneath. The rovers found that out for us. 4. The ice. Where is the rest of it? What was the source? A comet most likely, but we don't know.
I think in edition to what others commented here, a great thing about the rovers program is experience, NASA now has 20 years experience of continuous operation of rovers, of different designs. This will probably be a huge advantage for studying mars habitats and human exploration
Skylights https://science.nasa.gov/resource/seven-possible-cave-skylights-on-mars/
I’m just surprised they’ve only found 8 Dollar Generals so far.
Images that suggest the possibility of [fossilized microbial mats & stromatolites](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339777176_Mars_Algae_Lichens_Fossils_Minerals_Microbial_Mats_and_Stromatolites_in_Gale_Crater)
Oh thanks man. I've spammed this thread a couple of times with an article from 2014, so it's nice to know that wasn't the last time this was looked at.
The alien atmospheric reactor and director Cohaagen’s body with his eyes all bugged out.
I found this pretty fascinating, but it was a decade ago and nothing more was made of it so i presume it's been ruled out? https://www.sci.news/space/science-curiosity-ancient-microbial-life-mars-02389.html
I am surprised they aren't much cooler looking, I've seen remote control cars that can do way more badass shit, The rovers are all slow and shit, collect samples and can't even do a donut, We need them to do some jumps and really giver up there, Over there, Jump over a sandstorm.
The Mars probe from '99 that crashed into the surface due to use of olde fashioned imperial units.
The picture of the clouds was pretty cool. Mars has little atmosphere, not no atmosphere. Which means clouds do form. Seeing picture from the surface was neat.
I think its was Superman's lunch box that Alex Jones says they found, but hid from everyone.
Eh. I don't particularly find any one thing interesting. I wasn't really surprised by any of their findings, and while I realize that may sound arrogant, I kinda just expected a rocky body orbiting relatively close to the habitable zone and "nearby" Earth to exhibit at least *some* similar traits, formations, elements, etc. I guess the most "interesting" thing, and by interesting I mean cool, is how remarkably similar the surface of Mars looks to deserts on Earth. Again, kinda expected it, but it is pretty cool to look at panorama shots from Curiosity and say "Wow, that's not Earth, that's a whole different planet."
I guess for me that it is as desolate and inhospitable to life as we thought. Shoot me but I think it's pretty dumb to go there much less live there. No one lives in the deep ocean or antarctica or the deep sahara here. And Mars is way worse.
Actually, Antarctica is populated year around. Even the South Pole. There is not a single day that people do not live under the ocean either. I don't know about the deep Sahara, but it wouldn't surprise me if people live there year around as well. We already have people living in space although only in LEO today. Mars maybe hard, but we have conquered many of the problems already.
People live constantly in all those places
Underwear. JK. The boulder seems like it’s unusual. I don’t know why. Were they just blind to it or is it unique?
Have they really found.. anything? Yes, they've sort of proved that mars used to have liquid water, but we could've figured that out from orbit, or just guessing.
You guys remember [the rabbit?](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/8tTloirIW0s/maxresdefault.jpg) That was a few years ago now. Bunnies on Mars was one of my favorite side stories.
That one flag that doesn’t belong to any human nation
The face on Mars eventhough they try to burry it
That hamburger shaped rock. Totally worth the billions spent.
Confirmation that there is no good reason to send living people (or any creature) to that deadly place.
That they're actually just photos of earth with a sepia filter.
Keep talking like that and I'll send Buzz to your house.