Posted on 01/24/2007 10:26:29 AM PST by Moseley
Missing Mars craft appears to be a lost cause Solar-panel trouble may have ended the probe's 'illustrious career.'
[snip] In its 10-year career, the probe has sent back more than 240,000 images of the red planet, providing the first strong evidence that water flowed there as recently as 100,000 years ago.
It also charted weather cycles and mapped landing sites for the two rovers now operating on the Martian surface. [snip]
The craft had "an illustrious career," said Fuk Li, JPL's Mars program manager. "We are still holding out hope, but we are fully prepared in our heart that we may never talk to it again."
Launched Nov. 7, 1996, the Mars Global Surveyor has exceeded its intended lifetime fivefold and produced a string of discoveries. Among them:
The craft found gullies cut into slopes that had few impact craters, indicating the action of liquid water in modern times.
Its infrared camera found concentrations of hematite, a mineral that generally forms under wet conditions.
Using its laser altimeter, the probe produced a detailed topographic map of Mars that revealed highly eroded or buried craters too subtle for previous observation.
Its magnetometer found traces of a global magnetic field, like Earth's, that once shielded the planet from damaging cosmic rays.
It tracked changes in weather for four complete Mars years, the equivalent of eight Earth years. For three consecutive Martian summers, it showed that the polar ice caps were shrinking, suggesting a climate change in progress.
The craft "has surpassed all expectations," Meyer said. "It has already been the most productive science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries" as the images it sent back are fully analyzed.
[snip] thomas.maugh@latimes.com
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If the sun is causing global warming on Mars, and also on Pluto and also on Neptune's Triton moon, then the SUN has INCREASED its energy output as part of the regular sunspot cycles and other cycles.
If the sun is causing global warming throughout the solar system then the VERY SLIGHT warming of the Earth -- far, far, far less than global warming hysteria models predict -- must be caused by the SUN, not human activities.
Global warming models are already in deep trouble because they predict that the earth should have warmed up (already) 10 times more than observed. So, clearly the models are completely wrong. Now, add a known fact that the sun is causing the entire solar system to warm up, and there is no room left for man-made activities to be responsible.
never use logic and facts regarding global warming, climate change, whatever the term is..you're getting in the way of a liberal and their grant money..
The Green Party should be renamed the Watermelon Party-Green on the outside and RED on the inside!
Your reasoning is biased and faulty.
It goes something like this, Earth has water and has life, therefore Mars which used to have water, must have had life.
Bottom line: Studying Martian climate and extrapolating to conclusions on Earth is questionable.
Bottom line: The earth is warming and it may or may not be due to man made co2 as a contributing factor. Frankly, we don't even know if warming is good or bad. All we know is that it is happening.
>>the SUN has INCREASED its energy output as part of the regular sunspot cycles and other cycles
or GOOGLE "Milankovich Cycles". Our orbits wobble, causing our ice ages (or lack of them). "it wasn't our Tahoe?...hmmm I'm confused".
Yeah, but...uhmmm....FLAT EARTHER!!
If you look at the temperature record (real ones, not the ones touted by the global warming nuts), warming is linked to the best periods in the planet for life.
Global cooling cycles are deadly. The mini ice age was disastrous for human life.
Of course, in the 1970's, global cooling was the fad threat. But now global warming is the new global cooling.
AKA the mars rovers.
Damn humans!
Space global warming ping.
By G_D I think you're onto something!
Ping.
My God! Don't you see, people? Global Warming is caused by NASA spaceprobes! When we get data on it, why are those damned things always around!/sarc
Bump, good post.
The probe must have stumbled across the Haliburton Martian strip-mining operations, so it had to be destroyed.
Source?
Climatologists acknowledge the sun has been getting brighter, but still say that human activity has a more powerful, overriding effect on global warming than the sun heating up. They are too scared to push this issue for fear of blacklisting by the IPCC. This is the same IPCC whose economists predicted that North Korea would have a bigger economy than the U.S. in a few decades. And legitimate economists were blacklisted and labeled global warming deniers' when they spoke out. The IPCC knows all and any dissent will be crushed regardless of facts.
Or Google 'global dimming' for a u-turn in solar output within the decade.
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