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> they might be colonies of photosynthetic Martian microorganisms, warmed from the sun, now sunbathing in plain view.

That's incredible. Is that really possible? I wonder why the rover doesn't check them out? It seems weird it's digging through soil looking for chemicals possibly related to life when there's potential life out in plain view.

NASA has some very strange priorities.

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When planning a landing site for each rover mission, NASA considers a variety of factors and makes a best-guess as to the fruitfulness of each site from a scientific perspective.

Clearly a team of brilliant scientists has not failed to consider the possibility of exploring these strange spidery features, but they have decided against it for the time being.

It doesn't really make sense to assess their "strange priorities" as an outsider looking in with very limited knowledge as to how their decision making process actually works.

Yeah; just for starters, such a sandy area seems like a serious risk on its own to a rover, never mind the risk actual geysers would pose. The geysers are interesting, but are they worth jeopardizing an entire rover expedition for?

You don't have to use a rover. What about a quadcopter or balloon filled with heated gas?

Good luck.. the highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to the density found 35 km above the Earth's surface

I think a latex balloon filled with hydrogen could achieve positive buoyancy. Just bring a little bit of water and you can make your own hydrogen.

I don't know of many latexes that are springy at -100 C.

It wouldn't have to be latex. What's wrong with mylar?

Touché. See Camper Bob's response for something that would make more sense.

There is, to a first approximation, no atmosphere on Mars. To a slightly better approximation, there is an atmosphere on Mars, but only enough to cause trouble, not enough to actually be useful for anything.

There's enough atmosphere for Nasa to seriously consider deploying airplanes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_aircraft

We've had the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4261806

A cessna would need wings as large as a 747 and be traveling about mach 1 to take off, iirc.

Thats an awesome metaphor! Going to use this one, thanks.

Mach 1 where?

On Mars. Mach, the speed of sound (vibrations), varies with changes in heat, density, etc.

Mach 1 always means the speed of sound in the local environment.

So it would need wings that have ten? times more surface... that doesn't mean this couldn't be done using small scale drone designs.

On the other hand, the loss of a rover to one of these plumes could itself provide interesting information: It would conclusively prove that they occur explosively, and if we can photograph the rover afterwards then the displacement of an object with known mass would let us gauge the amount of force these things exert.

From what I read, there's a big concern about contaminating Mars with Earth-based bacterium. To ensure the drill would be useful after landing, they pre-set one of the drill bits. By doing that, they broke the sanitized enclosure, and there may be contaminants present that survived the trip. They are supposedly avoiding signs of life with Curiosity.

I would be very interested in the source for this info

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0910/Scientists-fear-C...

"Planetary Protection Officer Catharine Conley" ... Best job title ever?

The guess is random geyser's powered by CO2 plumes, so probably dangerous for the rover to check out directly. Or, maybe they will check it out during the time of the year it's cold. Not sure how far away the rover is from this, either.

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