Posted on 11/21/2012 3:19:55 AM PST by djf
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.
The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.
SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently.
"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."
The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a two-year mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.
The car-size robot carries 10 different instruments to aid in its quest, but SAM is the rover's heart, taking up more than half of its science payload by weight.
In addition to analyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of Red Planet air. Many scientists are keen to see if Curiosity detects any methane, which is produced by many lifeforms here on Earth. A SAM analysis of Curiosity's first few sniffs found no definitive trace of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, but the rover will keep looking.
Curiosity began driving again Friday (Nov. 16) after spending six weeks testing its soil-scooping gear at a site called "Rocknest." The rover will soon try out its rock-boring drill for the first time on the Red Planet, scientists have said.
Atomic Force Microscope at the ready.
ATM scans a microprobe over a surface...works in air (and in biological materials) and has a resolution down to large atoms.
Either that or my car keys...
I hope their next “major announcement” is that they won’t be making any more “major announcements”!
Just put out a press release. That’s how everyone else does business.
New game on FB:
NASA Trolling for Dollars...
Zynga could make a billion, if even one of them was a decent programmer!
Perhaps Curiousity will finally settle the matter. But I doubt it. Nothing short of a sample return mission will suffice to remove all doubt.
Like the “rabbit on Mars”? Hoagland says that after a few days, NASA drove the rover over it and crushed it.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/spotlight/opportunity/b19_20040304.html
Close on the opener.
There’s an asian woman who reports NASA stuff for NHK or some other Japanese station. Supposedly they found a a metallic CocaCola bottle cap (the ones that require a bottle opener). Today most of them are screw off caps except for Mexican coke that still uses glass bottles and caps that also need openers.
DRILL BABY DRILL!
Maybe it’s a macro organism. ;-)
They would announce they found the Loch Ness monster on Mars before they would announce something like that.
A Coke bottle cap on Mars would mean one thing, and one thing only.
Man has already been there.
OK, two things.
Man was there.
And he was thirsty.
And so what, the magic is in the lenses. They obviously can tote lenses and cameras. We’d be talking about a custom instrument, not the sensitive and finicky apparatus we knew in biology class.
Finding biological stuff on Mars is not implausible even without some abiogenesis theory, as asteroid impacts on Earth splash material into outer space fairly frequently on a geological time scale.
And seriously, it wouldn’t surprise me.
I’ve heard a couple interviews with people involved in black ops and they say “Whatever you think we have, take that and add 100 years tech to it”.
They wouldn’t have retired the shuttle unless they had a replacement.
The next question becomes what other instrument or capability you give up in order to fit the interplanetary cellular microscope in the mass budget.
Maybe they found the flag that was planted there by the astronauts (according to Sheila Jackson Lee.)
CCD.
Charge-coupled device.
It’s a chip, basically a photo-sensitive computer chip. The lens could literally be bonded onto the surface. Total weight? Maybe an ounce, with shielding...
Same kind of tech they use in cell phone cameras.
The magnification is dependent on the lens, the resolution is a function of the chip.
So what is the Shuttle replacement now that they have stopped flying?
Well it does not seem to me that it would replace any shuttle flights to the ISS. Just a recon platform if it is indeed real and in some sort of production!
It’s anti-gravity.
Pressurize it and you can go anywhere.
Actually, “anti-gravity” is a misnomer. The electric field is at right angles to the magnetic field and there is a third vector force that is perpendicular to both.
I have a book on my coffee table by a renowned physicist who had proved it theoretically (using math and physics equations), and actually done it experimentally (measured decrease in weight after the hardware was set up).
Anti-gravity is no longer just a theory or something you see in 1950’s sci-fi movies. It exists and we are using it.
The power source is nuclear, used to gen the electricity needed to maintain the varying pulsing fields.
Jus kiddin...
;-)
Ok like to see it unclassified!
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