Update: Whoa, wait just a cotton-pickin second. I was too hasty; I found another microscopic image from Sol 327 of the same area on the rover, with the same feature present. So, it looks very likely that this is actually a part of the rover itself, perhaps some kind of clear epoxy. Yep, I make mistakes from time to time. I'm leaving the rest of the post as-is though, as there is no point in hiding my mistakes. Mea culpa.
By now, most of my readers will have heard about the big NASA announcement yesterday. The current presence of liquid water on Mars came as no surprise to me, having been intimately familiar with the work of Charles Shults. I work with the guy, and I'm editing his book, so I've seen evidence of gullies, geysers, flow patterns, glaciers and so on for over a year now. Soon after the NASA announcement, Charles posted this image on his website, showing even more compelling evidence for liquid water than was presented at the NASA briefing:
This image was taken on Sol 1006 with the microscopic imager on the Spirit rover, which looked at the top of the rover itself. Look in the top left quadrant of the picture. See that round, transparent, shiny thing? Here's a closeup:
It isn't part of the rover. It is sitting on top of the dust that covers the rover's solar panels. It refracts the light (look at the straight piece of metal below it, see how the light is bent? Hold a ruler up against your monitor along the straight edge, and again on the image of the straight edge within the bubble).
It's a drop of water, sitting on top of the Spirit rover.
How did it get there? The theory we are tossing around here is that some water condensed on the panoramic camera mast and then dripped onto the solar panel.
The NASA guys called the images of the gullies taken by the Mars Global Surveyor the "squirting gun" evidence of water on Mars. Well, this is even better, and should put an end to the debate about the present-day existence of water on Mars. Mars is sopping wet.
Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Mars, Water
2 comments:
I'm not sure sopping wet would be the word to describe Mars (as that would be like the Amazon rain forest) but fairly wet would be one way of describing Mars.
;)
It will get very interesting once the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter locates underground rivers beneath the surface.
Once located, the only thing we have to find is resources, and soon we will be calling Mars home sweet home.
Great photo! I hope you don't mind if it is borrowed for another blog. (You will be on my blogroll)
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