"The best way to know what it is is to run away from it" - Nasa

Well thats not the exact quote. The actual quote is

A step toward understanding what they are involves the rover leaving the small crater in which it is now exploring. "Get a good long safe distance away�then see if we see any more of them," Squyres said.

Hm, that makes no sense to me. This is in reference to tiny thread like objects/microbes seen on Mars. Seems they want to get away from them and hope the public forgets about them?


www.space.com...

they want to get a better view, so it dosnt happen again.

I think that the investigator said it to see if they could actually determine if the thread like objects aren't from the landing itself. It is stated that there was a lot of fibre in the landing material.

That seems like a lapse in logic to me...why not stop for a day or two, examine the thing, and determine what it is before leaving?

How do they know they didn't happen to get lucky and land in one of the few spots on mars containing visible life?

[Edited on 20-2-2004 by Cutwolf]

Originally posted by Cutwolf
That seems like a lapse in logic to me...why not stop for a day or two, examine the thing, and determine what it is before leaving?

How do they know they didn't happen to get lucky and land in one of the few spots on mars containing visible life?

[Edited on 20-2-2004 by Cutwolf]

But, the article says that they want the rover to leave to see if there are actually more like these out of the radius of the landing itself.

And what if they aren't? What if the rover really did score an interplanetary hole in one and landed in one of the few hotbed for martian life on the planet? And now when they leave it there may not be any since it is so rare? What is the harm in checking this at the scene?

Also, what if the landing kicked up life from below the surface that normally wouldn't be able to be found without a sudden impact (rover landing) kicking them up?


I don't see what the harm is in checking.

Maybe they have checked, saw something they didnt want people to know about, and made a flimsy excuse to get away from it.

Definetly sounds possible to me.

they were talkin about that, tryin to get away to make sure it was or wasnt from the lander, parachutes, etc.
as for the quote, taken out of context, its #ed up, not even like 'going backwards to go forwards', its jsut 'go backwards'

but the "shell" and the parachute are some 300 or 400 meters from the crater that the lander was in. So if the threads are from the airbags or lander than it would be safe to assume that we could find more of the same threads all the way out to the shell and parachute. So their thinking is a little off, if they are assuming that the threads are from Earth materials yet they are going to drive away from the crater to see if there are any more. Assuming they are driving in the direction of the shell, parachute.

Getting away from it is totally logical. Besides there is NOTHING more than can be done than is already done. You can only take a picture of it - DONE.

It is not possible to use any of the other instruments for analysis because of the very small size.

It is quite possible that the Rover may shed more as time goes on.