Interesting Website

This website lets you travel through time focusing major discoveries of not only the geography of Mars but other significant facts. The way it is set up was really interesting and I learned alot!

Spirit explores "Home Plate"

The Spirit Mars rover is now examining the geology of the “Home Plate” area in the Victoria Crater. The rover is currently scouring the area in search of a suitable place to spend the winter, safe from high winds and dust storms. In the past few days, the rover has been exploring this area and collecting data with its thermal emission spectrometer, taking panoramic photos, and measuring atmospheric dust levels. The article then goes on to describe the day by day activities of Spirit in the Crater in great detail. Data analysis has not yet taken place in this article, so the findings are rudimentary, but interesting.

Did Martian Meteorites Come From These Sources?

"Cosmochemists have determined that these rocks came from basaltic igneous sources with young (by planetary standards) crystallization ages no more than 1.3 billion years (with the one exception: ALH84001 with an age of 4.5 billion years) and were ejected from Mars by impact cratering events between 600,000 and 20 million years ago. While these rocks provide invaluable direct 'ground truth' that scientists are using to help piece together the chemical and geological history of Mars, the question remains where exactly did these rocks come from?"

Landing Sites

Scientists have narrowed their selection of landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, which launches as the end of 2009. The rover is the largest to travel to mars and its main goal is to find if their is an habitablity on Mars. They are focusing their attention on sites that have clay minerals that scientists think formed by water contact. Many other factors must be considered such as steepness of terrian, the locate winter, high winds etc. However scientists will use the Reconnasissance Orbiter to scout the possible 6 sites and choose one. Hopefully, the Laboratory rover can give us some interesting results on the possibilty of life on Mars.
Link:http://www.topnews.in/six-sites-chosen-rover-landing-mars-25113

Investigating Mysterious Deposits

The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has discovered new properties of the Medusae Fossae Formation on Mars. It is thought that these deposits could be some of the youngest deposits on Mars' surface. Using Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (Marsis) to take different radar soundings, the orbiter has found that the deposits are over 2.5 km thick in places. There are many theories as to the creation of the deposits, but the mystery has yet to be solved. Marsis is proving to be a great resource for further exploration of Mars.


http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mars_Express_Probes_Red_Planet_Unusual_Deposits_999.html

Medusae Fossae Formation Still provides Mysteries

The Mars Express probe has recently sent back deep-penetrating radar data of the Medusae Fossae Formation near the equator of Mars. The formation is near the divide between highlands and lowlands and has often been called a "stealth" spot due to the fact that it has absorbed other forms forms of radar at higher wavelengths. The spot intrigues scientists because it lacks much cratering, indicating that it may be one of the youngest geologic spots on the planet. The new data is consistent with a fluffy substance like dust, in a lyer 1.4 miles thick. However it seems unlikely that dust would be so thick, offering the possibility of volcanic ash. The electrical properties of the formation indicate a substance much more like water ice. In all, the new information raises as many questions as it has solved and some of the scientists involved speculate that unless new ways to analyze the spot can be created, we may never know what the formation is made of until we actually go there.

The article is here.

Deposits on Mars May Be Large Ice Cap

An article posted today by National Geographic news discussed a possible ice cap at the equator of Mars. The materials were spotted at the equator, but they appear to contain a large amount of water that has only been seen on the Red Planet's poles. The materials were found using a new high-resolution radar camera which shows similarities between the properties of deposits on an area called Medusae Fossae. The observed properties may also mean that the Martian equator is rich in ice. Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum has examined the Martian surface with his team of scientists. They have been using an instrument called MARSIS, which is aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. The nature of the deposits has been a geologic mystery for decades. The radar observations have deposits more than 1.4 miles thick in places. The data also showed that the deposits are highly porous, meaning that they could be pure ice protected by a blanket of sediments. However, Watters and his team believe that volcanic ash or wind-blown deposits could be sources of materials porous enough to look like ice in the images. On Earth volcanic pumice can be up to 90 percent porous when it's first deposited, but gravity soon forces it to collapse on itself, thus decreasing its porosity. Since gravity is much lower on Mars, highly porous deposits may retain their properties longer. The question is how thick of a deposit could be sustained and have such low porosity. The team now needs to see if there is a plausible alternative to ice.