Birmingham’s link to Mars has been a bit tired lately, what with helping control two rovers 48 million miles away. “I’m 64 years of age and I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” said Thomas J. Wdowiak, a University of Alabama at Birmingham astrophysicist who has helped guide the Mars mission from NASA’s Pasadena, Calif., Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Wdowiak, also known as “Tommy Test Tubes” on the Kid’s Page of The Birmingham News, has spent time over the past few months analyzing why the Mars dirt is crunchy, studying small round BB-size granules and figuring out why Mars is the color it is.
March 2nd, 2004
Meridiani Planum Was Wet Astrobiology Magazine
Opportunity scientists now believe that the landing site near the martian equator was once ‘an area where liquid water once drenched the rocks’. In places, up to forty percent of the outcrop can be composed of sulfate-rich salts, akin to magnesium sulfate like epsom salts. The presence of bromine also suggests that the region may have formed by slow evaporation and percolation by water.
March 2nd, 2004
Opportunity Rover Finds Strong Evidence Meridiani Planum Was Wet
Scientists have concluded the part of Mars that NASA’s Opportunity rover is exploring was soaking wet in the past. Evidence the rover found in a rock outcrop led scientists to the conclusion. Clues from the rocks’ composition, such as the presence of sulfates, and the rocks’ physical appearance, such as niches where crystals grew, helped make the case for a watery history.
March 2nd, 2004
Meridiani Planum: “Drenched”
Some rocks at Opportunity’s landing site in Meridiani Planum on Mars were once soaked in liquid water. Members of the Mars Exploration Rovers’ international science team presented the evidence today to news reporters at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
March 2nd, 2004
Statement on Mars Rover discovery The Space Foundation
We congratulate NASA and its international partners for the significant findings announced today of the proof of water and a possibly habitable environment on Mars, discovered recently by the Opportunity Mars Rover – which is now exploring the Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet.
March 2nd, 2004
Mars rocks once ‘water drenched’
Nasa says its Mars rover Opportunity has shown unequivocally that the Red Planet had the right conditions to support life some time in its history.
March 2nd, 2004
Rover finds evidence landing site once wet, habitable Spaceflight Now
NASA’s Opportunity rover, studying exposed bedrock in the crater where it landed by chance in January, has found clear evidence that Mars once supported a wet, habitable environment, one that would have been suitable for life, scientists announced today.
March 2nd, 2004
Opportunity Finds Evidence of Past Liquid Water The Planetary Society
Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity — which landed five weeks ago inside a small crater near exposed bedrock — has found evidence that Meridiani Planum, was once “drenched with water,” and, thus, once suitable for life as we know it, scientists on the mission team announced at NASA Headquarters today.
March 2nd, 2004
Water Once Filled Mars Opportunity Rover Landing Site
NASA scientists have found enough evidence of water on Mars to believe that the area around the Opportunity rover was once awash with the wet resource. The rover’s Meridiani Planum landing site shows tell-tale signs that water once covered the area, then gradually evaporated away. In a much-anticipated press conference from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., scientists said that body of water might have once been the size of one of Earth’s Great Lakes.
March 2nd, 2004
NASA: Liquid water once on Mars
NASA scientists say the Mars rovers have found what they were looking for: Hard evidence that the red planet was once “soaking wet.” “We have concluded the rocks here were once soaked in liquid water,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University. He’s the principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit.