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Related: About this forumMars rover Opportunity finds sign of 'water you could drink'
NASAs Mars rover Opportunity has scraped away at some of the oldest rock it's examined and found the strongest signs for water it has ever discovered over its 9.5-year mission, scientists for the Mars Exploration Rover project said Friday. The scrappy little rover is now heading down Endeavour Craters rim to Solander Point, on what is in some ways a brand new mission, officials said.
"We consider it 'Sol 1' all over again for Opportunity," said John Callas, the missions project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A sol is a Martian day.
Just before leaving a spot called Cape York on its southbound journey, Opportunity examined a rock called Esperance using its X-ray spectrometer and microscopic imager, finding clear evidence that it held clay minerals that had been altered by water a whole lot of it. It's a far cry from many of the previous findings on Martian moisture, said mission lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University.
"We run around talking about 'water on Mars, water on Mars' -- in fact, what Opportunity has mostly discovered evidence for in the past was sulfuric acid on Mars," Squyres said. "What we have here is a very different chemistry.
This was water you could drink."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mars-opportunity-rover-water-solander-curiosity-nasa-20130607,0,4749208.story
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)zbdent
(35,392 posts)zbdent
(35,392 posts)kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)It's been YEARS. Talk about the Energizer Bunny.
I thought it finally died a year or so ago.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Actually it got stuck I believe which meant it couldn't prepare for the (Martian) winter properly and then died over the course of the winter.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Simply incredible. How many people can get a computer on Earth to survive that long?
longship
(40,416 posts)Well, at least it'd be well chilled. One could certainly drink that. If they find that, I might be talked into trying out for the Mars One one way trip.