Temperature and pressure at Gale, Suitable (for short periods) for liquid water? |
Temperature and pressure at Gale, Suitable (for short periods) for liquid water? |
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Junior Member ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 62 Joined: 11-July 11 Member No.: 6058 ![]() |
Just a quick query from someone with no background in science. Obviously, MSL has AFAIK not returned evidence of recent (i.e. years/decades) liquid water in its vicinity; however, I was interested by the following graphs:
08.21.2012: First Pressure Readings on Mars http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4501 08.21.2012: Taking Mars' Temperature http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4502 The first indicates that the pressure between 15 Aug and 18 Aug never dropped below c. 690 millibars; the second shows that, for a period of a couple of hours on 16 Aug, the temperature rose above freezing. If water had been present on the surface, then, would it have been liquid during this brief period? The pressure and temperature seemed to satisfy the conditions for liquid water as I understand them (indeed, the pressure seems to be high enough (just) on a 24-hour basis to allow for the presence of liquid water). Thanks in advance for your opinions (corroborative or not!) on this. |
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![]() Senior Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 1465 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Columbus OH USA Member No.: 13 ![]() |
Gerald, it may be correlated because the ASIC chip isn't very far into the interior of the rover, according to this diagram:
That's from this document: Mixed-Signal ASIC for Rover Environmental Monitoring System Showing the trend over multiple sols would take some data massaging, as each day can have something like 30,000 samples, which would be a lot of overkill. There are some apparent glitches here and there that might have to be dealt with. Maybe best to wait for the calibrated data! Specifically the ground temperature daily swing would be interesting--isn't that what they used to show the transition between the high and low thermal inertial units as they entered Glenelg? -------------------- |
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