[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Magma and Water on Mars

--- Martian meteorites tell us part of the fascinating story about when volcanoes erupted and water flowed.

Written by G. Jeffrey Taylor
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
posted December 27, 2005

[Guest_Myran_*]

CosmicRocker said: . It seems it would be dificult to build a robotic device that could be used effectively for a variety of circumstances, without making something that would be too complicated for a space mission.

I think you are right there, such a device would risk being extremely complicated, and so being at risk of a break down, and extremely expensive.

There are one advantage to having one laboratory in place, and thats it would be able to look at a larger number of samples.
But im inclined towards a sample return, more tests can be made in a laboratory here than any we cna envision to send to Mars.
Of course the sample return mission would need to be supported by a rover that got an arm and the tools to both identify and bring interesting samples back.

And in the end a sample return would also give good press to the space agency, read ESA & NASA, that accomplish the task.

Richard Trigau: Yes, a dating service....

A dating service for what? Lost, abandoned and lonely spacecraft?
(Sorry-sorry-sorry, couldnt resist.)

[JRehling]

A dating service for what? Lost, abandoned and lonely spacecraft? 
(Sorry-sorry-sorry, couldnt resist.)

A spacecraft wouldn't need a dating service if it visited Itokawa's red light district...

(Anyone else read both those threads? )

[Bob Shaw]

New Scientist 17 December 2005 (P52) has a brief half-page article relating to Charles Frankel's Worlds on Fire (Cambridge University Press 2005). In it there's an interesting description of the carbonate volcano in Tanzania which keeps getting mentioned in passing here.

It's called Ol Doinyo Lengai and it exudes alkali-rich lava with high proportions of sodium and potassium carbonates, and low in silicon. The temperature of such lava is only about 550 C, and it is *very* runny, as fluid as oil.

The point is made in the article that such runny lava might mimic situations on Venus, though I think it may more closely resemble Io (in terms of landforms).

Bob Shaw