Monday, May 25, 2009

Huge Mars Region Shaped by Water, Rover Mission Finds

A false-color image shows Cape St. Vincent, a feature of Mars's massive Victoria Crater. After a dangerous descent into the crater, the Mars rover Opportunity has shown that the red planet once had a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, scientists announced in May 2009. Photograph courtesy Steven W. Squyres

From National Geographic:

Shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, according to new findings from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity.

In 2004 Opportunity had spotted minerals and blueberry-shaped rocks indicative of ancient groundwater in the Martian crater Endurance.

The robotic explorer has now found similar signs of past water in Victoria, a crater some 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) away.

Opportunity also spotted unique rock layers in the sides of Victoria Crater, which are likely the petrified remnants of ancient sand dunes.

Read more ....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

We have just added your latest post "Huge Mars Region Shaped by Water, Rover Mission Finds" to our Directory of Science . You can check the inclusion of the post here . We are delighted to invite you to submit all your future posts to the directory and get a huge base of visitors to your website.


Warm Regards

Scienz.info Team

http://www.scienz.info