NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows on Mars Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Dec. 4, 2006

Dwayne Brown/Erica Hupp
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726/1237

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278

MEDIA ADVISORY: M06-186

NASA SCHEDULES BRIEFING TO ANNOUNCE SIGNIFICANT FIND ON MARS

WASHINGTON - NASA hosts a news briefing at 1 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Dec.
6, to present new science results from the Mars Global Surveyor. The
briefing will take place in the NASA Headquarters auditorium located
at 300 E Street, S.W. in Washington and carried live on NASA
Television and www.nasa.gov.

The agency last week announced the spacecraft's mission may be at its
end. Mars Global Surveyor has served the longest and been the most
productive of any spacecraft ever sent to the red planet. Data
gathered from the mission will continue to be analyzed by scientists.


Panelists include:
- Michael Meyer -- Lead Scientist, Mars Exploration Program, NASA
Headquarters, Washington
- Michael Malin -- President and Chief Scientist, Malin Space Science
Systems, San Diego, Calif.
- Kenneth Edgett -- Scientist, Malin Space Science Systems
- Philip Christensen -- Professor, Arizona State University, Tempe,
Ariz.

[tglotch]

A few points:

1) Remember that a TES "pixel" or footprint is 3 x 8 km, so any interesting region with a new spectral feature would have to be at least this big. Typically we like to see the same feature in a few pixels to believe that its really there. In addition, TES hasn't been mapping mineralogy for quite some time due to a "glitch" that has degraded the spectral data. Recently TES has been used for thermal inertia and atmospheric studies.

2) I don't know, because I haven't talked to him about it, but listening to the interview, I would guess that the gullies to which Phil was referring were those he discussed in a Nature (I think) paper a few years ago which also show a "pasted-on" terrain near the gullies which he hypothesized to be dust-covered snow. If there's a new major announcement regarding these gullies and MGS, its probably some new interesting MOC imagery.

but then again, I've been wrong before, so who knows?

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

2) I don't know, because I haven't talked to him about it, but listening to the interview, I would guess that the gullies to which Phil was referring were those he discussed in a Nature (I think) paper a few years ago which also show a "pasted-on" terrain near the gullies which he hypothesized to be dust-covered snow.

Hmmm...

I'm wondering if we should bone up Malin and Edgett's 2000 paper in Science, as well as Christensen's Nature paper.

Also, a 2003 PSRD release might be good reading.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Dec 5 2006, 06:30 PM