/sci/ - Science & Math

> crashing europa into mars

this is stupid.
Europa is a moon orbiting Jupiter, you would be better off establishing a colony on europa or at least a water shipping program
MAYBE you could try crashing comets into it, but I am hoping that we find more water under the surface of mars.

I have to mention, that in terms of what we currently actually know about the solar system, we really do not know very much. A lot of the detailed descriptions have lots of speculation in them, and we have not been able to drill into Mars at all yet. The problem is that rovers cannot go to the caves and lava tubes that would probably provide the basis of fantastic martian habitats.

Also, there is water ice in the soil at higher latitudes (see Phoenix Lander) and historically it is extremely likely that there were large quantities of subsurface water (according to clays, veins), but the martian atmosphere is not able to support the water cycle and so evaporation did not return as rain, so water sank down to the bedrock.

If we wanted to somehow restore Mars's wetness and warmth, we would probably first want to restore the atmosphere and temperature (greenhouse effect) however the atmosphere can't last really long on Mars, since it doesn't have enough gravity.

>yfw I have been in the same room as the curiosity rover or maybe a prototype, while it was still in development
(but it was underneath a curtain, to keep out oxygen. didn't actually see the real thing unfortunately)
The other day I was talking with one of the people working with Opportunity.

When Spirit died, what they believe happened:
lacking topographic maps, they inadvertantly steered Spirit into a sand-filled crater region.
It got stuck
They were unable to position the rover in an optimal area for sunlight
Without notifying the team really, the head administrator something of the project declared Spirit a Stationary Research Platform.
In the last days, they made some progress in getting the wheel unstuck.
But because it couldn't orient itself, it didn't get enough sunlight energy
Their current theory is that because of this, the clock ran out of battery,
and it couldn't communicate with Earth anymore.

Now, Opportunity is going to be looking at a big crater.