Another Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Water
Posted on: Friday, 5 March 2004, 06:00 CST
NASA's Spirit rover has found evidence of past water activity in a volcanic rock on the other side of Mars from where its twin, Opportunity, discovered signs that ground there had once been drenched.
The amount of water at Spirit's site in Gusev Crater would have been much less than what is indicated at Opportunity's site in Meridiani Planum, Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator of the rover mission, said Friday.
The findings came from aggressive study of a rock dubbed "Humphrey" that Spirit came across en route from its landing site to a big crater named "Bonneville," Arvidson told a Jet Propulsion Laboratory news conference.
Spirit used its rock abrasion tool to grind below the rock surface and reveal cracks filled with apparent minerals, an indicator of water action familiar to geologists studying Earth rocks.
"I think the best bet is that water was in the magma and as the magma crystallized, kind of last stages of the fluids led to formation of these white deposits ... and perhaps produced some minerals that filled in the cracks," he said.
Scientists are unable to determine when the water may have been present but the evidence suggests it was during the long-ago formation of the planet.
Scientists making the historic announcement about Opportunity's discovery earlier this week could not say whether there had been standing surface water or even an ocean there, but data showed water had flowed or percolated through those rocks.
Arvidson said there was much less water indicated by "Humphrey."
"I don't think it was a ground water percolation, necessarily, but probably water that came up with the magma," he said.
Both rovers continued to work well, mission officials said.
Jim Bell, lead scientist for the rovers' panoramic cameras, also said Opportunity had photographed a solar eclipse caused by the passage of the martian moon Deimos across the sun, but scientists were waiting for images to be sent to Earth.
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On the Net:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
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