Cry Baby Cry for Mars Global Surveyor
I received a very depressing email from NASA JPL the day before yesterday. It was a press release titled "NASA'S Mars Global Surveyor May be at Mission's End".
For those of us with a keen interest in Mars, the wait for a Mars orbiter mission was an excruciatingly long one. Many years had elapsed since the Viking orbiters had ceased operations, and the failure of the Mars Observer mission only lengthened the wait. We got a taste of the martian surface with the Mars Pathfinder mission.
The arrival of Mars Global Surveyor at Mars was a cause for celebration. Pictures of Mars returned by its cameras blew away the 20 plus year old photographs from the Viking orbiters. These new pictures of the martian surface became the core of numerous presentations I created describing the red planet. They are also the primary source of images for the Mars Art Gallery.
Mars Global Surveyor, which was launched on November 7, 1996, has lasted longer than any other mission to Mars and has returned over 240,000 photographs of the red planet. The last contact from MGS was on November 2. Remarkably, NASA is using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to try and photograph Mars Global Surveyor in order to visually inspect the spacecraft. NASA JPL still has some small hope that communications with MGS can be reestablished.
The press release included a few of Mars Global Surveyor's significant discoveries, which I quote here:
- The spacecraft's camera found gullies cut into many slopes that have few, if any, impact craters. This indicates the gullies are geologically young. Scientists interpret this as evidence of action by liquid water, essentially in modern times.
- The mineral-mapping infrared spectrometer found concentrations of a mineral that often forms under wet conditions, fine-grained hematite. This discovery led to selection of a hematite-rich region as the landing site for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.
- Laser altimeter measurements have produced an unprecedented global topographic map of Mars. The instrument revealed a multitude of highly eroded or buried craters too subtle for previous observation, and mapped canyons within the polar ice caps.
- The magnetometer found localized remnant magnetic fields, indicating that Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth's, shielding the surface from deadly cosmic rays.
- The camera found a fan-shaped area of interweaving, curved ridges interpreted as evidence of an ancient river delta resulting from persistent flow of water over an extended period in the planet's ancient past.
- A long life allowed Global Surveyor to track changes through repeated annual cycles. For three Martian summers in a row, deposits of carbon-dioxide ice near Mars' South Pole shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed for Mars Global Surveyor.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor May Be at Mission's End
Ad Astra, Jim
For those of us with a keen interest in Mars, the wait for a Mars orbiter mission was an excruciatingly long one. Many years had elapsed since the Viking orbiters had ceased operations, and the failure of the Mars Observer mission only lengthened the wait. We got a taste of the martian surface with the Mars Pathfinder mission.
The arrival of Mars Global Surveyor at Mars was a cause for celebration. Pictures of Mars returned by its cameras blew away the 20 plus year old photographs from the Viking orbiters. These new pictures of the martian surface became the core of numerous presentations I created describing the red planet. They are also the primary source of images for the Mars Art Gallery.
Mars Global Surveyor, which was launched on November 7, 1996, has lasted longer than any other mission to Mars and has returned over 240,000 photographs of the red planet. The last contact from MGS was on November 2. Remarkably, NASA is using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to try and photograph Mars Global Surveyor in order to visually inspect the spacecraft. NASA JPL still has some small hope that communications with MGS can be reestablished.
The press release included a few of Mars Global Surveyor's significant discoveries, which I quote here:
- The spacecraft's camera found gullies cut into many slopes that have few, if any, impact craters. This indicates the gullies are geologically young. Scientists interpret this as evidence of action by liquid water, essentially in modern times.
- The mineral-mapping infrared spectrometer found concentrations of a mineral that often forms under wet conditions, fine-grained hematite. This discovery led to selection of a hematite-rich region as the landing site for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.
- Laser altimeter measurements have produced an unprecedented global topographic map of Mars. The instrument revealed a multitude of highly eroded or buried craters too subtle for previous observation, and mapped canyons within the polar ice caps.
- The magnetometer found localized remnant magnetic fields, indicating that Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth's, shielding the surface from deadly cosmic rays.
- The camera found a fan-shaped area of interweaving, curved ridges interpreted as evidence of an ancient river delta resulting from persistent flow of water over an extended period in the planet's ancient past.
- A long life allowed Global Surveyor to track changes through repeated annual cycles. For three Martian summers in a row, deposits of carbon-dioxide ice near Mars' South Pole shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed for Mars Global Surveyor.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor May Be at Mission's End
Ad Astra, Jim
posted by Jim | 11:20 PM
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