Mars’s Gusev Crater Found to be Similar to Old Faithful
“On Earth, hydrothermal deposits teem with life and the associated silica deposits typically contain fossil remains of microbes,” says Jack Farmer, professor of astrobiology in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Farmer is one of the paper’s co-authors. “But we don’t know if that’s the case here,” Farmer notes, “because the rovers don’t carry instruments that can detect microscopic life.” He adds, “What we can say is that this was once a habitable environment where liquid water and the energy needed for life were present.” **************************************************************************
The words ” hydrothermal vents” have taken on a new meaning, other than in reference to Wyoming’s Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. The erupting geyser spouts several times a day from a hydrothermal vent on the sea floor, a highly hot mineral-rich liquid which supports a hugely diverse organistic population in and around the vent sites.Depending on the site location for the eruption, this wide diversity of life ranges from the tubeworms and gigantic clams on the Pacific vent sites to eyeless shrimp on the Atlantic side. And quite recently, the ever-ready Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has found deposits of almost pure silica in the Martian Gusev Crater, formed when volcanic steam or/and hot water passed through the porous surface of the red planet and then spread slowly spread through the surrounding area, according to the University of Arizona.From the very beginning in January of 2004, when NASA landed each of the two rovers on different sides of Mars, the goal has been old-fashioned rock hunting to show the presence of water. Four years later, instead of its scheduled three months the rovers have gone far beyond their expectations with NASA’s explorations of the silicon site at Gusev Crater.
A highly important depositional site, Gusev Crater is a 90-mile wide crater south of Mars’ equator– formed about three-and-a-half billion years ago–with NASA landing the rovers in what they thought had been a body of liquid water for some time.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
