Spirit Rover: More Evidence for Ancient Hot Springs on Mars - AmericaSpace
Oce Eeco stashed this in Planetary Science
> The Spirit rover may have finished its journey a long time ago, but there is still plenty of data to go through and analyze, and continued study of that data has provided more evidence for one of the rover’s most significant findings: ancient hot springs in this area inside Gusev crater. Hot springs, as on Earth, would also have provided a potentially habitable environment for any Martian microorganisms, as well as being ideal for preserving fossils of such organisms if they existed."
> View from the Spirit rover looking toward Husband Hill on the right, with the lighter-toned Home Plate rock outcrop below that. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
> The “Elizabeth Mahon” feature seen by the Microscopic Imager on Spirit (top), compared with columnar sinter from El Tatio (bottom). Both images are about 5 cm across. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University
> Orbital view of the Home Plate rock outcrop; the soil and rocks nearby show evidence for previous hydrothermal hot springs a long time ago. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Salty deposits found by Spirit as its broken wheel dragged in the sand, which also point to past hydrothermal activity. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Stashed in: Mars!, Space!, SETI, Mars Humans
"Elsewhere in the Solar System, evidence for current hydrothermal activity was also just recently announced regarding Saturn’s geyser moon Enceladus, where vents similar to “smokers” on Earth are now thought to exist on the seafloor of this tiny but active moon."
---> http://pandawhale.com/post/60087/ganymede-enceladus-new-life-search-playgrounds
If there were once hot springs on Mars, does that mean that we could someday revive them?
In current conditions of pressure and temperature on Mars, water can't stay liquid. Or it's ice, like on the north pole or it's vapor, and the chances are high that the vapor will soon be washed away by the solar wind.
So answer is no, not in current conditions.
So the folks who want to build a colony on Mars will have to encase it all within a bubble?
Yeah or something hermetic underground, that's the only solution I see.
Trying to recreate an atmosphere without having a magnetic shield is pointless.
4:58 PM Mar 25 2015