[SofQ comment] This is very interesting. It may come as a surprise to many readers that Mars looks very much like Earth. It's not red or orange - NASA applies a lens to tint the pictures or they release black and white photos... before you read the article here's a real color picture of Mars... blue sky and all... it gets to the point where you ask yourself "what does the government not lie about?"
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| Mars image derived from original data published by NASA and JPL on Marsrover Image Gallery and exploratorium.edu. |
| Black & white photo released with this article |
[Source] In the first inventory of minerals on another planet, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity found soil that bears a striking resemblance to weathered, volcanic sand in Hawaii, scientists said on Tuesday.
The rover uses an X-ray imager to reveal the atomic structures of crystals in the Martian soil, the first time the technology, known as X-ray diffraction, has been used to analyze soil beyond Earth.
"This was a 22-year journey and a magical moment for me," NASA's David Blake, lead scientist for the rover's mineralogical instrument, told reporters during a conference call.
Curiosity found the Martian sand grains have crystals similar to basaltic soils found in volcanic regions on Earth, like Hawaii.
Scientists plan to use the information about Mars' minerals to figure out if the planet most like Earth in the solar system could have supported and preserved microbial life.
"The mineralogy of Mars' soil has been a source of conjecture until now," said Curiosity scientist David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
"This interest isn't just academic," he added. "Soils on planets' surfaces are a reflection of surface exposure processes and history, with information on present and past climates."
Specifically, scientists want to understand what conditions existed to allow the particular minerals to form. The first Martian soil scoop is mineralogically similar to basaltic materials and comprised primarily of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine.
About half the soil is non-crystalline materials, like volcanic glass, that form from the breakdown of rocks.
Several processes can account for this weathering, including interaction with water or oxygen, similar to how rust forms on iron-metal surfaces.
Brute force, such as sandstorms or meteorite impacts, also could account for the soil's weathered components, said chemist Douglas Ming of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Curiosity rover landed inside a giant impact crater near the Martian equator in August for a two-year, $2.5-billion mission, NASA's first astrobiology expedition since the 1970s-era Viking probes.
The rover is scouting a site where three types of rock intersect. Next year, scientists plan to drive it over to a three-mile (5-km) mound of sediment, named Mount Sharp, rising from the floor of the crater.
"We're hopeful that once we get into the truly ancient materials on Mount Sharp, we will find minerals that suggest there was a habitable environment of some kind there. We haven't had that happen yet, but we have a lot of time left," Blake said.
While X-ray diffraction has been around for a century, using the technology on Mars required years of work to scale down refrigerator-sized equipment into something that would fit into the space of a shoe box.
The miniaturized, low-power instrument is used in the mining, oil and gas industries and is being evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to screen for counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
The rover uses an X-ray imager to reveal the atomic structures of crystals in the Martian soil, the first time the technology, known as X-ray diffraction, has been used to analyze soil beyond Earth.
"This was a 22-year journey and a magical moment for me," NASA's David Blake, lead scientist for the rover's mineralogical instrument, told reporters during a conference call.
Curiosity found the Martian sand grains have crystals similar to basaltic soils found in volcanic regions on Earth, like Hawaii.
Scientists plan to use the information about Mars' minerals to figure out if the planet most like Earth in the solar system could have supported and preserved microbial life.
"The mineralogy of Mars' soil has been a source of conjecture until now," said Curiosity scientist David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
"This interest isn't just academic," he added. "Soils on planets' surfaces are a reflection of surface exposure processes and history, with information on present and past climates."
Specifically, scientists want to understand what conditions existed to allow the particular minerals to form. The first Martian soil scoop is mineralogically similar to basaltic materials and comprised primarily of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine.
About half the soil is non-crystalline materials, like volcanic glass, that form from the breakdown of rocks.
Several processes can account for this weathering, including interaction with water or oxygen, similar to how rust forms on iron-metal surfaces.
Brute force, such as sandstorms or meteorite impacts, also could account for the soil's weathered components, said chemist Douglas Ming of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Curiosity rover landed inside a giant impact crater near the Martian equator in August for a two-year, $2.5-billion mission, NASA's first astrobiology expedition since the 1970s-era Viking probes.
The rover is scouting a site where three types of rock intersect. Next year, scientists plan to drive it over to a three-mile (5-km) mound of sediment, named Mount Sharp, rising from the floor of the crater.
"We're hopeful that once we get into the truly ancient materials on Mount Sharp, we will find minerals that suggest there was a habitable environment of some kind there. We haven't had that happen yet, but we have a lot of time left," Blake said.
While X-ray diffraction has been around for a century, using the technology on Mars required years of work to scale down refrigerator-sized equipment into something that would fit into the space of a shoe box.
The miniaturized, low-power instrument is used in the mining, oil and gas industries and is being evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to screen for counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
The article mentions nothing about this, but....how come all these ancient civilizations have written about the red color of mars? Why do amateur astronomers see red when they look at mars in their backyard...?
ReplyDeleteThe best way to understand it is to start with this documentary. It's about the Moon's true color but the same principles apply: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6ggirhnTm4 and also hit this site: http://areo.info/mer/ which has a running tally of the Spirit and Opportunity rover pictures. Be sure to read the home page to understand the process of true color. Astronomers know the moon is not grey and Mars in not "red"... Earth appears blue from space and we know because we live here that we don't have blue dirt, blue rocks, blue trees, etc. Another very good site on exposing the Mars disinformation is here: http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/index.htm
ReplyDeleteI am awfully sorry but the earth’s blue color as perceived from space is due to the fact that the exact same color is in fact widely perceived on earth itself. During daytime the sky is, or at least appears, to be blue as do large body’s of water. In simpler terms the earth appears blue from space because it widely appears just as blue on earth itself. Of course there is no blue mud or blue rocks or blue trees but their absence do not undermine or contradict the overall bluishness of our planet. By the way trees are green and the Amazon rainforest can in fact be seen from space as: GREEN !
ReplyDeleteHi, I believe you are actually making my point. My comment at the top of the article is pointing out Mars is not simply red or orange on the surface the way NASA with their filters and lenses have been depicting the planet for decades now. NASA has been releasing pictures showing the planet with a blanket orange/red sky, orange/red rocks, orange/red dirt which makes no sense - no planet is just one color or shades of one color. It's nonsense. Just like the moon isn't simply one color - grey. In fact the moon is quite colorful. See this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Rhbo3ZPoE We are now seeing NASA starting to slowly introduce what Mars really looks like on the surface - and lo and behold it's **not** a blanket orange/red color. See this post by Truth Seeker who is a blog contributor where he took NASA's own recent pictures to show how NASA is now losing the red/orange filtering scheme for Mars: http://sageofquay.blogspot.com/2013/01/mars-in-true-color.html
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