I'm still on my first bag, good luck and godspeed phoenix, congratulations to all who have worked so hard to bring her this far!

Munching peanuts and hiding behind a pillow....

The cynic in me wonders if this has more to do with the phoenix landing than anything else, but I'm curious what new evidence might have been unearthed....

Dry roasted, with a celabratory drink to wash them down when the landings confirmed!

I think a small dose of pessimism is a sensible cushion against dissapointment. I had a similar feeling about cosmos 1, and sadly that was bourn out. But then I also felt grim forebodings about the launch of Dawn and New Horizons, and they have been great succeses to date. But then I'm not in the space industry, so maybe my intuition's not as finely tuned...GULP>

Theres an interesting picture here of a crater with a strange dark patch at one end, would anyone care to hazard an explanation? I thought it could be an exposed section of basalt, but I dont see why it wouldn't be covered with dust like the rest of the terrain.

If its the same image as the one in the paper linked by IM4 then yes the colours are inverted (and it does look similar).

This might seem kinda daft but I hope some real innovation might come out of it. Thought it should go here because someone actually succeeds then the title of this thread will have to be changed!

My condolences.

Raise eyebrow a-la spock: Fascinating! Thanks juramike.

These images are great, and they've made me look at phobos as being more of a place in its own right, rather than 'one of the rocks orbiting mars'.

I've not seen this mentioned, and if thats because too many of the abstracts fall outside the forum rules I trust the moderators will delete this thread. That said there's plenty of stuff that falls well within this forums arena.
There are results of a ten year survey by Geronimo Villanueva that look particularly interesting (although here probably isn't the place to discuss them) anything catch anyone elses interest? And is anyone going?

Sorry for resurecting a long dormant thread but I thought there might be some interest in this article on the incorperation of oxygen into tholins when exposed to liquid water, either by cryovolcanism or impact melt. This seems the logical place to put it, I'm sure Doug will move or delete it if it's not appropriate!

My opinion is that titan is now the most interesting single object in the solar system- complex organic chemistry, likely underground ocean, active surface processes, the list goes on. The only way I see it being knocked off its top perch is if enceladus proves to have and underground sea powering its plumes, which would give us the opportunity to sample material from an extra terrestrial sea. That said a sample from a cryovolcanic flow on titan could prove just as interesting! Exciting times...

A little news on the farside radio-astronomy idea.

This seems to have been overlooked, and it talks about ice deposits formed during the amazonian, perhaps it's old news that I missed? Anyway if there has been volcanic activity in the geologically recent past, as the article juramike linked suggests, then (IMHO) the chance of there having been habitable niches in the amazonian era take a boost.

The world will miss him. I hope we can do his memory proud.

The crater to the upper left of the two marked seems to have something similar. It'll be interesting to see how many craters have this effect, and if its in anyway related to size.The image that pops into my head is a large impact producing a temporary lake of liquid water underneath it, which powers cryovolcanism.

How long would it take earth's atmosphere to change if all life here disappeared tomorrow? And how large does the biosphere have to be to maintain atmosphere in its current state? The compositions of mars and venus atmospheres may well point to no significant biological activity today, but I don't agree that it would rule it out in the deep past. The only other world we know of with a thick nitrogen atmosphere is titan, and the common link there is organic chemistry rather than life (or at least life as we know it).

Following that line of thought: could they be the result of Co2 venting from shallow buried pockets?

I'm hoping to read the paper before I form any strong opinions. I'm a bit surprised by all the fuss this has caused though, from what I've read it fits very well with the picture of martian history we were already building up. Three things i'd like to say are; 1) Hoping for extant life on mars has always been an against the odds kind of thing, thats what has made it attractive to me.
2) The fact that the climate went bad doesn't affect the evidence that it was once more benign, even if only for a fairly short period waaay back at the begining.
3)If mars was truly never habitable, even for microbes, it's a disapointment but not as great as some will say. Europa and ganymede both hold strong promise of oceans, the nature of the plumes of enceladus has still not been settled to my mind. In addition, we know that there is a lot to learn about the prebiotic chemistry that led to life from titan, and learning more about life here is the whole point of looking for life out there.
Does any one know how to get hold of the paper ?

What are the odds of the victoria impactor or fragments of it being at the surface? Apologies if this has been discussed previously. Do we have any clues as to what kind of rock it was?

That makes sense, although I not sure I see it happening. What I was wondering was since we may well do orion missions to asteroids anyway, what experiments could be piggybacked easily on a manned mission, and what experiments would it make sense to send?

I'd not considered that asteroids have their own rotation, thanks rogelio.

Depending on the forthcoming US election results the idea may get major boost.....

Going somwhat off topic; I recently had a discussion here about plans to land an unmanned observatory on the moon, I wonder, would it make any more sense to land said observatory on an earth crossing asteroid? Especially as earth to asteroicd missions may take place anyway as rehearsals for dealing with one on a collision course? And, whilst I've got this buzzing about my brain, what science could be done during a manned mission to a NEO?

EDIT: I should make it very clear I'm not trying to start a manned vs unmanned debate, I'm curious as to what science could be done in the specific case of a manned mission, I'm mentioning the unmanned lunar observatory only because theres a good chance it's designers plan to service it, by a manned lunar presence, and the thought crossed my mind that a visit by an orion module could do the same thing for an asteroid based observatory.