I agree, great work Alan and thanks for the photos.

I politely disagree with flame. I believe signs of past life will be found on Mars and I'm still predicting they will find SAND WORMS!

In fact, I think I can see a sand worm poking his head our of the Martian soil in the very first picture, in the distance at the very top of the photo. Let's have some enhancement of that!

It isn't meant to find life in the first place, just to see if the building blocks for life are there.

Buzz kill, Bill, buzz kill.

I predict they will find GIANT SAND WORMS on Mars and I stand by my prediction!

...and they'll taste just like chicken.

Haha, I won't crush your dreams then; maybe, Sand Worms have been eating all the Russian missions to Mars!

New movie, Tremors on Mars.

New movie, Tremors on Mars.

Damn, a fifth movie. I would have to buy the series again, but this time it would probably be blue ray.

Good one Bill, Tremors on Mars! Now that's fun!

But mark my words, there will be worms!

I would be pleasantly surprised.

Giant worms on Mars which will then be renamed to Dune.

Dune, From one drug addiction to another :-)

sooo cool.we get to actually get to see a close up of another planet.finally a tax dollar that was spent wisely

A geologist's wet dream.

#1.12

Indeed, but one has to leave prejudice behind, as I am sure many of the assumptions made, would be wrong!

What's interesting to note here is, that the material that formed our entire solar system, did not come from our sun/star. It came from ANOTHER star that exploded because only in the fusion reactor of a star can heavy elements form. Ergo.. the planets that formed in our solar system is actually the debrie that was captured around our current star. Also, DNA for all life here was probably preserved somehow during the explosion of the old star system and replanted itself right here on Earth. This could have happened at anytime, and not at the time of the Solar system's birth. Basically.. everything you've learned about the creation of our Solar System from the current textbooks is wrong, and I'm here to set the record straight. There are many civilizations out there besides our own and it takes two stars, one exploded, and one stable one to create habitable planets. Do the research, I'm way ahead of you.. and it's the truth.

Not quite how it works, but you're on the right track Cavemanstyle.

Right, Steve! But its a bunch of unEarthly nothing. So its something else, you know something different for folks who are interested in new things. People who enjoy to discover, learn, stay alive.

Maybe you could work on developing a spirit for adventure, get out of the same old rut...

You know, like downloading new software into the old gray matter.

Uh dude?

I think the "old grey matter" is named Scott...

Oh stop...he's right but this is still pretty damn cool and we all know there are aliens running around up there even if they are microbial aliens.

A whole lotta nothing?!? Keep that down. Someone will see that as "undeveloped land" and pretty soon it will be full of strip malls.

Tony, you really DO live in Dallas.

Shhh, don't tell anybody.

Now That's what I'm talking about Tony... I'm want my condo (dome) with a view of Olympus Mons.

Rocks. Nothing but rocks.

What's the matter? Don't see the subtle shades of red and grey?

It doesn't. It's just so they can continue to send us edited, blurry images.

NASA doesn't want to go over their data limit with AT&T-Mars. It gets pretty expensive if you go over.

Only from the neck up.

That would be West Texas, and all that is missing is a rattlesnake.

East Texas is full of Pine Trees.

That's a very nice story, Tent. Now, let's work on your grammar so we can promote you to third grade.

I actually am to learn English. Thank you.

But really, really cold...

... And there's no one the-ere.. to raise them...

I guess the photo mosaic makes the shadows of the little rocks and stuff look incongruous - just in case the conspiracy folks need a tease ;-)

An awesome feat! NASA is awesome! Gives us all hope. I salute NASA and my Country. The great United States of America! May She long stir the resolve in the hearts of good people!

I think a few years ago, one of the Mars rovers snapped a picture of Earth in the night sky. It was just a faint, blue dot. It was pretty humbling to see how remote Mars is, and how insignificant Earth is from that distance.

It funny the sky does look like the sky on earth. Good enough to see a little blue sky. Or is it grayish? Anyway, the light seems to break the same colorspectrum as on earth (just from one pic only, hmmm). You'd wonder about the gasses floating around. Oxygen? That means possible water.

And how do the moons of mars look like from mars surface? Im curious too.

MGrinder, CO2 comprises 95% of Mars' atmosphere, 3% nitrogen and 2% argon. Phobos' diameter is about 14 miles; Deimos 8 miles--pretty tiny compared to our own moon.

Here's a nice graphic of the size differences of Earth, Mars, Luna, Phobos and Deimos, and the distances of the satellites from their planets. The distance from Earth to Luna is quite a bit different than that of Mars and its "moons" (glorified asteroids).

http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/emscale.html

If I'm not mistaken, if you were standing on Mars, you could differentiate Earth and Luna with the naked eye.

Jay-1644814

With enough water and that much CO2, couldn't plant life develop?

Once enough oxygen producing plant life was established, perhaps we COULD make a go of it there eventually.

The biggest obstacle right now to earth-like plants on Mars is going to be the temperature and air pressure. On it's warmest days, Mars gets close to Antarctica's coldest days.

"With enough water and that much CO2, couldn't plant life develop?"

Not out on the surface by itself. The total atmospheric pressure is too low for any Earth plants (Google: "treeline"), or for water to be liquid in all but the lowest places (most of the time it goes directly between solid and vapor states), and even then briefly...when it's warm enough to be liquid at all, which is not frequent on Mars.

You might coax something from the Antarctic rocks to get by in some places, but I'd be very surprised.

Not even mentioning the obscene amounts of raidation pelting the Martian surface every day due to Mars weak and practically nonexistent magnetosphere. Plant life would have a hard time on mars.

Plant life would have a hard time on mars.

I think evolution might prevail, if the right lifeforms were introduced.

Definitely possible. Not sure which would be easier though, bring up the atmospheric pressure or bio-engineering plants that can deal with the extremely thin atmosphere? Though really, I'd prefer to just bring up the pressure so we don't have to wear pressure suits on the surface...

Increase the gravity, increase the amount of atmosphere Mars can hold on to. Though how do we do that...?

I don't believe you have to increase the gravity to enable Mar's to hold onto an atmosphere, as if there was geological processes and water there before there must have been sufficient pressure atmospherically to contain heat and things. I believe the problem with Mars thinning atmosphere is more of a geological problem; as Mar's is smaller and cooled much more quickly than Earth, any magnetic field Mars had weakened to a point where solar wind and cosmic rays were able to interact with the atmosphere and slowly erode it away into space—causing sort of a runaway atmosphere loss.
While we could dump CO2 into Mar's atmosphere, we'd need to be constantly emitting atmospheric gases to sustain an artificially created one. It is possible though I would believe, but if mars magnetic field is incredibly weak, water loss from cosmic interactions might make it impossible to turn it into a garden world.

While we could dump CO2 into Mar's atmosphere, we'd need to be constantly emitting atmospheric gases to sustain an artificially created one.

The Martian atmosphere is already over 95% CO2, so I don't know where you are going with that.

And the same problem exists for a Martian magnetic field as exists for increasing gravity, that is, "how"?

While the notion of "domed cities" seems strange and sci-fi-y, it might be the best solution, at least in the "short term", as we could build in radiation protection and provide an enclosed area to hold atmospheric pressure and moisture, thus ensuring the ability to farm and live.

#16.12

See " making Mars Habitable " and then the Vents.

The Martian atmosphere is already over 95% CO2, so I don't know where you are going with that.

And the same problem exists for a Martian magnetic field as exists for increasing gravity, that is, "how"?

While the notion of "domed cities" seems strange and sci-fi-y, it might be the best solution, at least in the "short term", as we could build in radiation protection and provide an enclosed area to hold atmospheric pressure and moisture, thus ensuring the ability to farm and live.

Okay, so at the moment it may be 95% CO2, how many ppm is that? You can always add more; it isn't like the atomsphere has a set point for the amount of CO2 it can hold. 99% or 10%, It doesn't hurt. Not to mention that gases like CO2 are a greenhouse gas and very effective at increasing atmospheric pressure due to their density; as well, they bleed off into space slower. Any terraforming plan of mars will involve massive quantities of both CO2 and methane.

You don't really need a "how" to replicate, you just circumvent it; one, by constantly replenishing the atmosphere that's lost to space, and two, shielding areas to provide shelter during storms and limiting exposure to the outside—both more than physically possible. You're never going to be able to increase the gravity there, not without adding mass or finding a way to alter the bosons; further, it's probably the least important of the concerns.

You cannot constantly replenish the atmosphere. You will run out of resources with which to do so. A stable atmospheric pressure would need to be established without the need to replenish. Perhaps the introduction of a heavy inert gas? CO2 is really not heavy enough.

The highest atmospheric pressure on Mars is the bottom of Hellas Planitia, which is 1.16 kilopascals. The summit of Mount Everest is 33.7 kilopascals. The Armstrong limit is 6.25 kilopascals, which means pressure needs to be above this limit for human survival, minimum survival. We already know it fairly hard to breath at the summit of Everest, which is 5 times more than the Armstrong limit.

Without some way to increase atmospheric pressure, no amount of greenhouse warming is going to help. Outside living on Mars is a long way off, centuries or more. Domed cities, here we come.

CO2 is very effective at increasing atmospheric pressure, and why would you run out of CO2? Further, the fact that CO2 is mainly what comprises the Mar's atmosphere should be a good indication that bleeds off into space slowly. It's also easy to produce in quantities.

If you'd rather put Radon or something into the atmosphere (heaviest natural inert noble gas that could be produced in quantities) then be my guest; just don't expect to live to long. There are other things you can put into the atmosphere as well, like methane, oxygen of course, hydrogen, and ect.ect. But the main stay for increasing pressure will most likely be CO2. You will still have to replenish the atmosphere artificially to maintain it no matter what gas you use. As well as increasing water content constantly due to the fact that water vapor + solar wind = broken down into hydrogen and oxygen where the hydrogen freely floats away into space. This is how Venus lost its water. You could maybe get away with using SF6, which would be ideal, but not the as cheap as a byproduct gas like CO2. Also at certain tempatures SF6 breaks down into flourine which would cause some funky stuff with your water vapor.

Now if you could create a dynamo effect on the scale of a huge molten core spinning around to artificially create a protective magnetic field, then you could probably get away without replenishing it as much. But it'd just be easier to deal with losing stuff into space and using the atmosphere to shield you from solar radiation.

But the main stay for increasing pressure will most likely be CO2. You will still have to replenish the atmosphere artificially to maintain it no matter what gas you use.

Question: Where do you get the material to create CO2 to add to the atmosphere?

CO2 is very effective at increasing atmospheric pressure, and why would you run out of CO2?

You state, "why would you run out of CO2" vs. your statement quoted above where you state, paraphrasing, that even if you use CO2, you will still have to replenish the atmosphere no matter what gas you use.

The Martian atmosphere is currently at an equilibrium, adding anything is likely to bleed off into space barring a change in conditions.

Now if you could create a dynamo effect on the scale of a huge molten core spinning around to artificially create a protective magnetic field, then you could probably get away without replenishing it as much.

That is about as likely as increasing Martian gravity.

Question: Where do you get the material to create CO2 to add to the atmosphere?

Where do you get the material to create any gas in abundance to add to the atmosphere? It just so happens, CO2 is the by-product of many of our current engineering and energy producing products. As well, CO2 is rather abundant in the solar system; you could harvest it from Venus or even from earth by sequestering it than transporting it to Mars. Just because something needs to be replaced occasionally doesn't equate that you will run out of it in a foreseeable and useful time scale—the sun will explode before we ever depleted CO2 completely from the solar system.

The Martian atmosphere is currently at an equilibrium, adding anything is likely to bleed off into space barring a change in conditions.

This is not quite the case; Mar's atmosphere continues to change constantly. Mar's has currently been experiencing climate changes that have resulted in the polar ice caps shrinking; releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere naturally, creating a positive feedback loop. Whomever said "Mars is about as warm as Antarctica is on its coldest day" was incorrect. Mars can actually reach a mild 60-70 degrees during sand storms in summer. Of course because of the lower atmospheric density, this would still feel freezing to humans. Simply, if you were able to increase the temperature on Mar's by a few degrees on average this would continue the feedback loop, increasing Mar's atmospheric pressure to the point where you wouldn't need pressurized suits to survive. Continuing to add CO2, and then providing nitrogen as a buffer gas would further make mars density livable and allow the introduction of certain bacteria and plankton. Then you could work on converting CO2 to oxygen, adding more liquid water, methane, SF6 for stability ect. However, you'd still need to replenish this stuff for it to work. With a magnetic field to prevent hydrogen and other atoms from escaping, you're always going to have to replenish. It's not impossible, so I don't know what your argument is against this—adding CO2 is how it all begins and is required in any terraforming scheme.

So to sum it all up, no atmosphere is stable. Due to the lack of a magnetic field, particles in Mar's atmosphere (especially water) are messed around with, get excited enough to reach escape velocity, and converted to things that escape easily. It even happens here on Earth, but do to our magnetic field, it doesn't happen as quickly. In a billion years we're going to need to start thinking about modifying our own atmosphere! (Probably before that, haha.) Further, CO2 has a rather hard time escaping, either here, or on Mars.

That is about as likely as increasing Martian gravity.

Actually it's far more likely to create a large magnetic field then it would be to increase Mar's Mass to a level of Earths. Again, we're only speaking hypothetically here.

It just so happens, CO2 is the by-product of many of our current engineering and energy producing products.

I hate to say this, but that by-product is, for the most part, the result of burning fossil fuels; oil, coal, gas, etc. So far, no fossil fuels have been found on Mars.

Exactly. We're very good at burning fossil fuels. Why not on Mars? Further, dissolving certain carbonated rocks would CO2, and there are several laboratory processes involve acid and metal I believe, to create CO2 and water.

We can even sequester all our unwanted CO2, and CO2 from Venus. It isn't impossible.

Exactly. We're very good at burning fossil fuels. Why not on Mars?

For the simple reason that there are no fossil fuels on Mars. And if we find some at some point, there will be more to think about than modifying the atmosphere.

Umm.. You can still transport them to Mars? Actually, our probes and rovers have deposited some CO2 in Mars already.

Miniscule amounts, and transporting fossil fuels to Mars would not be economical.

The easiest way to get people on Mars, in the near future, is to build shelters that provide radiation shielding, atmospheric pressure and temperature control. Anything else is centuries away.

Haha Tony, of course; I thought we were having a hypothetical conversation on how to terra-form Mars. Any kind of proposal isn't really economically viable at the moment—hell—we still have to work on getting to Mars.

We can get people to Mars, now, but do we want to spend the time and money, and risk, to do so? But, yes, there are advances we can make to make the journey safer, faster and more economical.

My vote is to put a colony, or station, on the Moon and rotate crews like we do for the ISS. The information gathered would be invaluable for further exploration/colonization.

I'd rather not start another 50 years of just funding trips to the moon.

Actually Tony, we can't get to Mars today. We don't have any of the required infrastructure, we can't even get to LEO or the moon at that.

So you would rather send 3 to 5 trips to Mars and then quit going for 50 years? Though more likely it would be one or two trips followed by a 75 to 100 year drought.

I would like to see a continuous and growing presence on the Moon, while continuing to explore the rest of the Solar System.

And we can get to Mars, it's just a matter of whether or not we want to put resources toward it. We don't seem to want to (We, as in the nation. It would be easier as a multinational, but presents its own set of problems)

Tony, we can do a lot of things. Rarely is anything impossible. I just explained a possible way to terra-form mars. We could do this with our current technology. Though, that doesn't mean we actually have the infrastructure in place to do this; just as we don't have the infrastructure in place to go to Mars. So while it's logical to say we can't go be terraforming Mars anytime soon, we can also logically say we can't put humans on Mars either anytime soon.
So, we can theorize about what we can do, but it's different than actually doing it.

No Tony, I'd rather not see any more money at all spent on antiquated technology in space. NASA needs to be investing that money here, on research.

Finding life on another planet kind of puts the final nail into the coffin of religion for me. But I suspect finding live microbes would renew interest in getting human scientists to mars. It could provide evidence for a completely new evolutionary tree.

But finding life on a "near by" planet like Mars wouldn't necessarily be conclusive because it is thought that the planets and asteroids of the inner solar system swap rocks from time to time and microbes can hitch a ride in the process.

Not all that interesting, we already know the chemical composition of the atmosphere, not a lot left after figuring that out... the grounds much more interesting...

if you want a good image of earth from far away try the pale blue dot... google it.

We come in peace....hope you have a 'waste management' here.

At least they havent developed treehouse technology yet. Must be due to the lack of trees, no doubt.

Well, they're welcome to leave behind any of their technology on Earth, any time they like...

We don't do any of this for the sake of continuous headlines anyway (we got over the first moon landings quickly enough), so it's irrelevant.

MB-3604436

It's obvious you have a short attention span or don't have any sense of wonder. Is your Playstation on the blink or do you need a new wheel for your covered wagon?

Your comment makes me wonder how you ever mustered up the energy to make a comment. Hope it didn't tire you out.

yeah but the latency is crap. pings are 14 minutes.

#25.1

that is at the closest range so the longest would be? 14?? care to nearly double that?