well,i meant 'wet' ,not in the literal sense but thanks for the reply Doug

Judging from the colour images,martian soil looks like rust and the way it stains the sides of the scoop,it seems to be wet powdery rust!

dont know whether it is the right place to comment about this,but any ideas as to the origin of hills on the horizon of the phoenix landing site..we're sitting at the edge of Alba patera;could these represent ash/volcanic deposits from Alba and as to The 'green valley',is this a fracture from the same Alba??

was checking the phoenix landing site on MOLA map by MGS and noted the relatively low altitude below the average reference ground level for Mars;I think it must be between 0 to 4km below the average;then i just checked the southern cap which lies on a considerably higher ground(between 0 to 3km above the reference point);it looks like Phoenix had an extra 4km or so of atmosphere to slow down compared to MPL which we know crashed....any ideas /suggestions on this?

Anyone knows a thing about a microphone on Phoenix?Seems like noone has mentioned it and I'm not sure now that theres one!

I believe Peter Smith was giving peanuts to the people in the control room if you were watching on Nasa TV during EDL.Its great to be on Mars again!

Congrats to the Phoenix team!Great job guys!

2353..is that GMT?

I'm gonna have to stay up really late and hoping I'll be looking straight enough for work on Monday.Mars landing remains a priority thou ..wont be missing on the fun..GO PHOENIX...I'll be following events from my home from sunny warm Mediterranean!

I remember the Spirit and Opportunity landings...was up at 4 am..was in tears

we need a mineralogical signature to corroborate the hot spring idea........silica!!??

Do we know the composition of the light toned material in Hellas Basin?

So it seems that TiTAN exhibits some form of plate tectonics.Do we know whether titan crust moves as a single unit or like in the case of Earth,split up into more than one unit interacting with each other compressing and subducting as they move along.Is it possible to detect plate boundaries if any by radar operating on cassini?

I believe laser altimeter data will help shed further light onto the nature of the' spider'.

The high silica content detected by Spirit seems to be the result of geyser or fumarole activity in the past:thats the official interpretation of this finding.

I've read in some papers discussing atmospheric evolution on Mars as to a process where CO2 interacting with CASIO3 on the surface would also produce SIO2 and CACO3.However since martian carbonates have not been detected up to now,scientists have been reluctant to give such process much importance.

Could the present absence of carbonates justify to rule out this process as the source of SI02 in Gusev!?What other evidence would favour geyser/fumarole activity rather than CASI03 as a source for the high silica content of home plate soil?

I kinda like that!AWESOME

I am no planetary sceintist but just a humble enthusiast!I have a few queries maybe some of you could answer:

Why should Venus have a thicker atmosphere than Earth provided it lacks a magnetic field and hence being in direct contact with the solar wind ,which should produce higher rates of atmospheric loss.This seems to be the explanation for mars!?

The moon is said to be acting as a friction brake on Earths rotation and thus is slowing it down.Has anyone explained clearly why Venus is such a slow rotator in the absence of a moon!Could a previous collision of a cosmic body with Venus help to explain this . Venus was once(i think its about 500-800 million years ago) entirely resurfaced by hot magma .Could this have happened when this theorised collision took place?

Why should Venus lack a magnetic field given its the same radius and almost same density like Earth?Could it be that its dry compared to Earth ,simply explain for this significant difference?

The more I follow Mars,the more it becomes obvious that the water theory somehow is losing ground.Gullies as seen by Hirise seem to show landslide deposits and not necessarily caused by water!The Home plate deposits seem to be related to some form of volcanic activity!The frozen sea seen in 2005 seems to have been identified as a pond of lava! At this point,I would have to start to reconsider the true origin of the meridiani rocks.

Any ideas as to the composition of that rock?

Might sound dumb but could Cassini ever be positioned in an over extended mission to orbit Titan??Is it impossible to decay the current orbit to that around Titan??

Cant wait to see some CRISM data on the Holden crater layers!

Has someone got an explanation why Titans dark flat plains are along the equator??Dont think that is coincidental!

Dont really understand fully the idea of bueberry bathtub ring and the proof that water interaction in the formation of the haematite within the sulphate rich rock was mainly subsurface rather than surface water.I kinda like the idea that Victoria being at a higher elevation than eagle and endurance craters indicates that the surface water was shallower at the higher areas which would account for the smaller sized berries.The higher concentration and bigger sized berries around Victoria would only result from the excavation of such berries by the impact that created Victoria rather than an indication that subsurface was the main culprit .Maybe I still dont get the gest of it!

Maybe I'm posting in the wrong section as this has nothing to do with spirits route map,but what strikes from the Hirise imagery of this are of Gusev is that the columbia hill area seems to be devoid of craters compared to the lava plains where Spirit had landed .And yet the hills a re supposed to be older than the surrounding plains.How would one explain the relative lack of craters in this area?

But what is King George made up of?Is it Basalt rock or just a handful of iron berries?