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.

[Guest_Myran_*]

tuvas wrote: Liquid CO2? Is that even possible at Mars? Somehow I don't think so... But I could be wrong...

Liquid CO2 will not be possible in 'open air' with the Martian air as thin as it is, same as on Earth.
But nothing prevents liquid CO2 from being kept underground if it have a good nice aquifier or perhaps a lid of frozen water. Yes the pressure would be great, but this could also explain features like the ones we see here.

I personally think CO2 are a more likely explanation. This simply from looking at the martian temperature range. The surface are simply cold, and when we look underground it should be even colder in most places!
(This except any and still-not-found-despite-looking geotermal hotspots).
Colder conditions underground places the thermometer in the right range for frozen CO2, which happens at -78 °C.

Narrow cracks in the ground might become CO2 traps when the area chills down in the night. We also seen signs of karst topography in Meridiani, if that idea turns out to be correct there might even be larger caves where CO2 ice accumulate on the walls. When it melts at −57 °C there might not be space for it to expand and reach the gasous phase and so it rush towards the nearest opening - and so we have a gully.

So I am fairly in the same camp as deglr6328 on this one.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Liquid CO2 will not be possible in 'open air' with the Martian air as thin as it is, same as on Earth.
But nothing prevents liquid CO2 from being kept underground if it have a good nice aquifier or perhaps a lid of frozen water. Yes the pressure would be great, but this could also explain features like the ones we see here.

There are plausibility arguments against sequestration of liquid CO2 in the martian near-surface. For example, see Stewart and Nimmo [2002] (440 Kb PDF).