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The Mars Opportunity Rover has made its way into the Endeavor crater where it will carry out examinations of the soil to test for evidence of life on the Red Planet. Opportunity is headed to Spirit Point which is named after the other Mars Rover Spirit which ceased functioning last year.
Back in 2009 the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) discovered that the older, clay-bearing rocks along Endeavour’s rim represented a totally new rock-type — one that could give us a glimpse of life (or lack thereof) on ancient Mars.
“The clays [we found] are not only indicative of abundant water, but also a watery environment more suitable for life,” said Steve Squyres, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and the principal investigator for the science payload on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers. Squyres and his colleagues believe this new rock-type may have once been more hospitable to life than any of the others encountered over the course Opportunity’s 7-year tenure on the surface of Mars.
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It’s hard to believe that NASA’s Mars Rover Spirit which was only supposed to function for a short period of time had been going strong on the Red Planet for years. Sadly however its mission is coming to an end.
From surviving bouts of amnesia to an escape from a sandy dungeon, sometimes it seemed that NASA’s Mars rover Spirit had at least nine lives. But yesterday, after hearing not a peep since March 2010, NASA decided to cut communications with the rover, putting an end to a six-year Martian mission during which it traveled 7730.5 meters. Daredevil escapes aside, here we assess the scientific legacy of this robot geologist.
Mars Rover was rovin’ along the Red Planet where it snapped a picture of what looks like … a log of wood? The photo immediately a conspiracy theory rush in the blogosphere:
The unusual image was featured in a NASA press release in 2004, although the space agency made no mention of the timber-like object captured on the spacecraft’s 115th day on Mars.
But one website insists it is a leaked image that ‘could get someone killed.’ A writer from TheCrit.com said NASA’s claims Mars was a desert world were ‘lies’ and that ‘there are vast forests on Mars, ones that are kept from the public.’
They go on to speculate the ‘wood’ was brought to its present position by a flood of water that must have happened within 40 years ‘because the wood is intact.’
This fantastic discovery, of course, is in a long list of strange objects (humanoid, skull, doorway, cave) already found.
