Amazing Discoveries on Mars

I just found this video and thought I would share it.

A scientists discusses the importance of a human expedition to the red planet. There are many topics and features of the planet he spends time on, although he spends most of the lecture discussing human interest on Mars.

Some of the things that stick out in my mind:

1 Discovery of frozen water on the surface: He reveals a new color photo of a frozen "lake" inside of a crater.

2 Scans for water beneath the surface: He discusses deep scans that show evidence for a great deal of underground ice on Mars as well.

3 Methane in the atmosphere: Scans of the Martian atmosphere reveal several large deposits of Methane, the reason this is so striking is 99.9% of Earth's methane comes from life(microscopic, but still)!

He also shows and discusses some possibilities for exploration of Mars, and the geographic features of Mars that put Earth's wonders to shame really.

Great post. Thank you.

Absolutely amazing.

ARES sounds like a workable and feasable plan. LETS GET THERE ALREADY.

S&F

(That guy has a great presentation style)

Mars has been a fascination of mine since I was a child. I even re-read H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" awhile back. This comment is somewhat off-topic, but I thought I'd put it in this post. Late last year I read an AP article about a local man named Brian Trease, a mechanical engineer, involved in the Mars rover project. The second from last paragraph is a quote from this former Monroe County Michigan resident.

"We learn so much about the history of Mars, which helps us learn about the history of our planet," he said, "We continue to discover more water presence and find out how LIFE EVOLVED THERE. That can help us learn how life evolved here."

He states that life has evolved on Mars as if it were already a given and that we are learning from it. A mis-statement? A mis-print? Maybe he let the cat out of the bag and has admitted that we know there is life there and have been studying it for a while now.

sounds good.

one thing though. He first says life on mars can exist but will probebly be microscopic.

Then he goes to say that when they get this plane to mars it will change our perception about mars and can possibly find life.

How can a plane find microscopic life? unless he means actuall life like here on earth that could be observed from a plane. So is it just me or did he actually mean it like that?

flag btw

[edit on 27-3-2010 by colloredbrothers]

Thanks for the video. Interesting concept but I would think that a rocket powered plane would be very limited in the amount of time that it could spend doing research.

I would think that something solar powered or a small blimp-type arrangement would make more sense.

But then again, as the speaker pointed out, properly prepared the plane could collect a boatload of data that had never been done before. Need to start somewhere I guess.

To those with the imagination and willpower to come up with new ideas.