It is midnight on 1 January 2004 and you want to send a greeting on your mobile phone to a friend. Sorry, the line is too busy, try again later. If you think you are alone with this problem, you are wrong. Space agencies have had to work out ingenious solutions to prevent similar ‘engaged, call later’ tones from happening on Mars. For the first time, there will be seven spacecraft on the Red Planet at the same time. Will they all be able to ‘phone home’?
NASA scientists have discovered how an intricate martian network of streams, rivers and lakes may have carried water across Mars. Using new three-dimensional data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and a powerful state-of-the-art computer code that ‘models’ overland water flow, scientists visualized the complex flow of martian water. These data, acquired by the laser altimeter on board the spacecraft, provided highly accurate, three-dimensional topographic views of Mars.
Salty water driven by hot magma from Mars’ deep interior may be forming some of the mysterious dark slope streaks visible near the Red Planet’s equator, according to researchers in Arizona. They have determined the dark slope streaks generally occur in areas of long-lived hydrothermal activity, magma-ground-ice interactions, and volcanic activity. Some of the dark slope streaks are brand new?they have formed after the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft began detailed mapping of the planet in April 1999. Others have been observed to fade away on decadal time scales. Their findings support the hypothesis that Mars remains hydrologically active and that water could be shaping the planet’s landscape today.