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Opportunity Grinds Bedrock; Spirit Ready to Grind “Humphrey”
March 1, 2004 Pasadena, California - Nasa reports that the Spirit rover: "...used its rock abrasion tool for brushing the dust off three patches of a rock named "Humphrey," during its 55th sol on Mars, ending at 5:53 p.m. Saturday, PST. Before applying the wire-bristled brush, the rover inspected the surface of the rock with its microscope and with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, which identifies elements that are present. Brushing three different places on a rock one right after another was an unprecedented use of the rock abrasion tool, designed to provide a larger cleaned area for examining.
Is There Liquid Water on Martian Surface?
February 23, 2004 Pasadena, California - The stated goal of the Mars rover missions is to look for evidence of water that might once have flowed in rivers, pooled in lakes, or even created an ocean on the red planet. Photographs like the branching delta below taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera suggest a large flow of water.
New Form of Mad Cow Disease Resembles Human Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)
February 19, 2004 San Francisco, California - "Mad cow" disease once thought to be confined to England has spread to other countries the past few years, including most recently herds in Canada and Washington State. And this week came another disturbing discovery: Italian researchers have found a second type of deadly prion disease in cattle that closely resembles the prion proteins that sporadically and spontaneously attack and kill humans in what is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD. That means controlling what goes into cattle feed won't stop all mad cow disease - and that there are even more deadly prions in the food chain than anyone knew until now.
Update On Mars with Cornell Astronomer Steve Squyers, Principal Investigator on the Mars Rover Missions
February 20, 2004 Pasadena, California - Only one month ago, the Mars Rover called Spirit started working inside the Gusev crater and extended its robotic arm for the first time toward that large pyramid-shaped rock, "Adirondack," to find out what it was made of.
The answer is dark volcanic basalt beneath a dusty coating of red iron dust. In fact, many rocks in the Gusev crater seem to be basalt and scientists are trying to figure out if they came from a volcanic eruption IN the crater? Or were carried by a river of water into the crater long ago? Or maybe were even blown into the crater by strong Martian winds?
Distorted Distance Perspective in Martian Rover Camera Images
February 18, 2004 Pasadena, California - The NASA/JPL Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each came down near the Martian equator about 6,600 miles apart protected inside many inflated airbags. Each airbag was about 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter and had a stitched pattern of a ring with lines radiating from it. The idea was that each lander would be dropped from its orbiting spacecraft and fall to a bouncing landing inside the airbags. Soon after Opportunity came to rest on January 25, 2004, the rover's panoramic camera took a 360 degree image of the shallow crater surrounding it on the Meridiani Planum near the Martian equator.
Another Puzzle On the Martian Soil
February 14, 2004 Tempe, Arizona - The NASA/JPL rover called Opportunity has been rolling along the light-colored bedrock in the Meridiani Planum taking spectrometer measurements of the rocks and stopping here and there to examine closely the soil through its microscopic imager (MI).
Updated – Part 2: Opportunity Finds Martian Bedrock Has Lots of Sulfur and Small Spherical Rocks
"Such a high percentage of sulfur is unusual and this is what leads some folks to consider the volcanic origin (at the Martian bedrock). There are some minerals that have been identified in the infrared that would suggest the presence of water since they form in water. In particular, if this is a volcanic terrain that we are looking at, the presence of these minerals might suggest this was a hydrothermal area and sulfur is a component of such environments."
- February 11, 2004, Ronald Greeley, Ph.D., Arizona State University
Part 1 – Opportunity Investigating Bedrock and Spirit’s Headed for Bonneville Crater
"There is some interesting data from the bedrock!"
- Astrophysicist at JPL
February 10, 2004 Pasadena, California - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
Update on Spirit
Today, NASA/JPL reports that the Spirit rover in Gusev crater on Mars "broke the record for the farthest distance driven in one day on the red planet, traveling 21.2 meters (69.6 feet). Today's distance traveled shattered the Sojourner rover's previous record of 7 meters (23 feet) in one Martian day. Right now, Spirit is driving towards the crater-inside-the-Gusev-crater nicknamed Bonneville."
Scientists Create and Add Elements 113 and 115 to Periodic Table
February 6, 2004 Livermore, California - Back in 1989-1990, I had several phone conversations and a meeting with an electrical engineer named Robert Lazar to talk about his alleged firsthand knowledge of non-terrestrial technology. Bob had previously worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and from the end of 1988 until March 1989 was doing part time work at a highly classified place called "S-4" built inside the Papoose Mountains near Groom Lake, Area 51, at Nellis AFB north of Las Vegas.