Mars Mission: Curiosity - Page 58

On November 23 2012 16:17 Antisocialmunky wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
Besides life, what other stuff would warrant this much attention I wonder. Amino acids?

On November 23 2012 12:04 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Think we are forgetting "organic" is a loaded word if it is followed by "material" it is not life.

Also it is quite clear NASA does not have a PR person, or just doesn't care, handling this story.

On November 23 2012 17:26 NicolBolas wrote:


What much attention? The only thing that has leaked out is that they found something that might be extraordinary. Nobody's hyping this thing but us.

On November 23 2012 17:26 NicolBolas wrote:


What much attention? The only thing that has leaked out is that they found something that might be extraordinary. Nobody's hyping this thing but us.

On November 23 2012 16:47 TheDraken wrote:


depends on what it is. if it ends up being something like e coli. we'll end up with a news story about the manhunt within NASA to find the moron who didn't wash their hands before getting back to work. might make an interesting experiment though to see if it can spread and survive.

On November 23 2012 18:20 zalz wrote:
I doubt you get a job at NASA if you can't keep your mouth shut to some degree.

Besides, they are all scientists, they all known the massive shitstorm that follows if they get anything wrong, especially if this is about the claim that life is found on another planet.

Get that wrong and you have insane evangelicals screaming for the next 100 years.

Much of the internet is buzzing over upcoming “big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists are keeping quiet about the details.

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.

The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking, Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other scientists are free to speculate.

“If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,” says planetary scientist Peter Smith from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Smith is formerly the principal investigator on a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix lander, which touched down at the Martian North Pole in 2008. “It may be just a hint, but even a hint would be exciting.”

“If they found signatures of a very complex organic type, that would be astounding,” said Smith, since they would likely be leftovers from complex life forms that once roamed Mars. But the odds of finding such a startling result in a sample of sand scooped from a random dune are “very, very low,” Smith said.

Smith cautioned against speculating too much, since rumors have a way of spreading rapidly when it comes to any discussion of potential life on Mars. During his tenure on the Phoenix mission, his team was evaluating the interesting perchlorate results, which they kept secret during analysis. Rumors got out and then became worse when an unsubstantiated report claimed a member of his team meeting was meeting with the White House.

Guy Webster, a spokesperson for NASA, downplayed the discovery, stating:

"It won't be earthshaking but it will be interesting."

On November 26 2012 11:08 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
NASA pulling back:



Source

On November 26 2012 11:08 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
NASA pulling back:



Source

On November 23 2012 18:12 arbiter_md wrote:
For me it's surprising that nobody knows what it is about. I mean, there are a lot of people working there, they certainly know what are the studying. And the people from outside who they are in contact with sure are curios about what it is. Still, nobody leaked the info?

Hopefully they will release the story to public regardless of the results.

On November 26 2012 11:14 ElMeanYo wrote:


This is going to be something exciting for NASA but mundane for the rest of us... like some new mineral or atmospheric compound they didn't know was there. Thats it. Don't get your hopes up people.