6 ms·

Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrating Radar Discovery

61 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

foreverobama 3y ago
[dead]
Shinmon 3y ago
I have worked on algorithms and system analysis in very similar projects and it's highly doubtful that these results are worth anything. The radar sounder design and the numerical studies are flawed due to the used simulation methods. Numerical simulations are computationally expensive (in time and in space). Therefore many approximations are made (e.g. no real antenna pattern, no influence of the rover, thin slices of ground that is being simulated and than put together, ...) Reading such radargrams is like reading tea leaves. I am pretty sure that most of the echos in the radargram are surface clutter from bigger rocks or hilly areas in the distance. In one of our simulation works for a very similar project we have actually shown that this has a heavy influence on the radargram and is never considered in any of the works analyzing the results from Mars (or any other space object). These projects are extremely political even though they shouldn't be. Groups that have had instruments on previous missions will be part of the next mission, too, because they have flown instruments already. So, any study or inclination that the instrument as it is does not work is buried quickly and often unknown to many of the people in the science teams, too. I know, it's quite cynic but it's my experience and I know that I am not the only one feeling that way. So, while the rover and the measurements themselves are impressive, the analysis is wonky at best.
- okokwhatever 3y ago
  Interesting. Do you think private exploration solves this problems?
  - Shinmon 3y ago
    Not sure to be honest. I think the main problem of the current setup is that the science teams are not balanced enough. The radar sounding science team is mostly geophysicists because the interpretations are geophysical in nature, but there are not enough people who are experts in radar sounding, radar system and radio frequency wave propagation in general. The reason for that is, that this is not considered science and is looked down upon as mere "engineering". Privatized exploration would initially solve some of these problems for sure, but once a group of people and its structure has manifested I believe they would eventually suffer from the same problem. Anyway, this is a pretty complex topic which covers many aspects such as research funding, incentives in academia, vain egos, etc.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    The public sector doesn't have a monopoly on internal politics. Posturing between departments to be included in the next big initiative happens in lots of companies.
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      The point of competition is that if 10 deeply flawed organizations take a crack at a problem, they won't all produce garbage.
      - sdenton4 3y ago
        Or! They all produce garbage as they chip away at costs, and make bank telling people what they want to hear. The incentives are all wrong.
      - Shinmon 3y ago
        While that might be true the costs of going up there are so high that there won't be 10 companies who get a crack at it. Besides, the radar isn't the only instrument on the rover. There aren't many companies/groups in the world who have the know-how and financial means to do what NASA does here.
      - stetrain 3y ago
        That's not guaranteed. Really it's a question of incentive structure more than public vs private. For example there are cases I can point to of poor competition and high costs in NASA picking private companies to do big cost-plus development contracts, and cases where they did fixed-price contract bidding among a larger pool of competitors and got much better results.
- sgt101 3y ago
  This surprises me, I have seen ground penetrating radar results that have shown buried items which have then been dug up, why is this result different?
  - throwup238 3y ago
    They’ve been calibrated on Earth for use on Earth.
    - czbond 3y ago
      Oh interesting - so Earth calibrated systems expect... a specific density for display of signals?
      - throwup238 3y ago
        Radio waves propagate at different speeds through different mediums so the GPR gain and time window have to be calibrated for each soil type and other environmental factors like how wet the ground is. Once calibrated, then any deviations become interesting. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of sensor noise.
        neom 3y ago
        Are you insinuating that NASA sent an incorrectly calibrated device? I know NASA has its flaws but this seems like a stretch no?
        koheripbal 3y ago
        I think he means it would need to be calibrated on Mars as the exact ground density and composition isnt known from earth
        throwup238 3y ago
        Correct. The easiest way to calibrate a GPR is to stick a metal plate in the ground and cover it with a few feet of earth dug up on location. Can’t do that with some awkward rovers and an experimental helicopter. NASA can do some fancy signal processing to get some useful data but until its properly calibrated, any interpretation of that data especially visual should be taken with a Phobos sized grain of salt.
narag 3y ago
With manned missions on the horizon, are there any plans to settle the question for good? Once humans are living there for weeks (months?) it would be very hard to enforce a no-contamination policy.
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago
  Manned missions are not in fact on the horizon. At all.
  - narag 3y ago
    I guess we have different notions of what the horizon is. For me is "in my lifetime". To put it in context: I watched the first Moon landing on TV as a child, so I'm used to wait.
    - ninkendo 3y ago
      If you are old enough to have watched the moon landings on TV, my bet is that we will not see a manned mars mission in your lifetime. (I have my doubts it will happen in the next 40 years.)
      - narag 3y ago
        Do you accept the bet to be paid in person? :) You all are focusing on labeling the time to humans in Mars. But how about the time to completely discard that life exists now in Mars? How much time would it take to design, build and send a mission of this nature? It's the ratio of the two times that matters.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        It's funny how much things change over a decade, yet it never feels like anything is happening on a day by day, or even year by year basis. Just imagine going back 10 years in time and trying to describe to yourself what the next 10 years holds. You'd probably think yourself crazy! But to the point, in 2011 the US passed a law banning China from participating in the not-so-international ISS. The arguments given were that China had nothing to offer, and implicitly - that they'd just steal everything. Today, just slightly more than a decade later - they have one of the most advanced space programs on the planet, have built, launched, and manned their own space station, executed sample return missions from the Moon (the first since 1976!), and more. What would you have thought the odds of that in 2011? And all of these things are the sort of stuff that is happening in just a decade. The world is changing extremely quickly (even if it often doesn't feel like it), and space tech is one of the fastest advancing industries right now. I think the best window into the future is the past. Look at the trajectory we're on, not necessarily just the US - but the whole world. It's a good one, at least as far as space goes.
api 3y ago
A probably dumb question: why don't these missions carry a microscope instrument and a drill? We know there is sub-surface ice or water (brine) at some locations. Bring some up and look at it. I ask because there's a minor conspiracy theory that's made the rounds that NASA either has these things on board secretly or deliberately does not include them because they don't want to actually find evidence of life. I find that pretty unlikely and figure it's probably a lot harder to build such an instrument and get useful results than you'd think.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Both these things are very likely to break down. Using a drill as a human with hands is easy. Using a drill on another planet where any jam or failure is permanent is staggeringly hard. A robot can't just chuck up a bit, or wipe down dust and dirt which is stopping something from working. Or quickly regrease a bearing. Ultimately one of the best arguments on favor of manned exploration is that despite our robotics, a human in a space suit with a shovel would get an incredible amount done in a few hours. EDIT: drills have flown, but they are limited in capability.
- xwolfi 3y ago
  There is no life on Mars, so it s probably too expensive to bring useless instruments ?
  - Valgrim 3y ago
    We're not even sure there's no life on the moon. There could be liquid water in deep underground lakes and there would be no sign of it on the surface.
    - bregma 3y ago
      We're not all convinced there is life here on earth. Or at least intelligent life.
      - borissk 3y ago
maroonblazer 3y ago
I still get goosebumps watching video like this from the rover in TFA. It's on another planet. It's mind-blowing science non-fiction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8YubgIA_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8YubgIA_8
- potench 3y ago
  The article says the video is interpolated with AI. Why can’t we strap a GoPro on there and get some high quality 4K video footage?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - badcppdev 3y ago
    Insufficient bandwidth to get much 4K video back to Earth.
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      Apparently using the mars orbiter as a relay they can get up to 30Mbps. I couldn't find out what the transmission rate for lander -> orbiter is though. However lander direct to earth is in the Kbps on a good day.
    - chanandler_bong 3y ago
      https://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html shows the current status of the DSN, including bandwidth for each stream. Pretty interesting.
  - hackernoteng 3y ago
    Exactly. You can't trust any of it. Its all just CGI.
conductr 3y ago
Tangent: but in my layman understanding of all this, is it possible that we’re actually cross contaminating Mars with tiny amounts of earthly life? I know the travel and radiation probably makes it unlikely but also seems plausible to me a few specks of mold spores or DNA fragments could survive and be preserved in the cold of space/mars. Is it possible that in billions of years, when the sun has warmed and/or pulled mars closer, this seeds another earth-like evolution of life? It all seems improbable but nothing surprises me in space.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  The short answer is, yes, maybe. Probes intended to land on other planets are sterilized, I believe, to try to avoid such contamination. It's a long shot that such contamination is possible, and the sterilization probably isn't perfect, but there's a general consensus that it's probably not impossible, and hey, it'd be pretty dumb to at least not like wipe down the probe before shooting it into space.

61 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

[dead]

I have worked on algorithms and system analysis in very similar projects and it's highly doubtful that these results are worth anything. The radar sounder design and the numerical studies are flawed due to the used simulation methods. Numerical simulations are computationally expensive (in time and in space). Therefore many approximations are made (e.g. no real antenna pattern, no influence of the rover, thin slices of ground that is being simulated and than put together, ...) Reading such radargrams is like reading tea leaves. I am pretty sure that most of the echos in the radargram are surface clutter from bigger rocks or hilly areas in the distance. In one of our simulation works for a very similar project we have actually shown that this has a heavy influence on the radargram and is never considered in any of the works analyzing the results from Mars (or any other space object). These projects are extremely political even though they shouldn't be. Groups that have had instruments on previous missions will be part of the next mission, too, because they have flown instruments already. So, any study or inclination that the instrument as it is does not work is buried quickly and often unknown to many of the people in the science teams, too. I know, it's quite cynic but it's my experience and I know that I am not the only one feeling that way. So, while the rover and the measurements themselves are impressive, the analysis is wonky at best.

okokwhatever 3y ago
Interesting. Do you think private exploration solves this problems?
- Shinmon 3y ago
  Not sure to be honest. I think the main problem of the current setup is that the science teams are not balanced enough. The radar sounding science team is mostly geophysicists because the interpretations are geophysical in nature, but there are not enough people who are experts in radar sounding, radar system and radio frequency wave propagation in general. The reason for that is, that this is not considered science and is looked down upon as mere "engineering". Privatized exploration would initially solve some of these problems for sure, but once a group of people and its structure has manifested I believe they would eventually suffer from the same problem. Anyway, this is a pretty complex topic which covers many aspects such as research funding, incentives in academia, vain egos, etc.
- stetrain 3y ago
  The public sector doesn't have a monopoly on internal politics. Posturing between departments to be included in the next big initiative happens in lots of companies.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    The point of competition is that if 10 deeply flawed organizations take a crack at a problem, they won't all produce garbage.
    - sdenton4 3y ago
      Or! They all produce garbage as they chip away at costs, and make bank telling people what they want to hear. The incentives are all wrong.
    - Shinmon 3y ago
      While that might be true the costs of going up there are so high that there won't be 10 companies who get a crack at it. Besides, the radar isn't the only instrument on the rover. There aren't many companies/groups in the world who have the know-how and financial means to do what NASA does here.
    - stetrain 3y ago
      That's not guaranteed. Really it's a question of incentive structure more than public vs private. For example there are cases I can point to of poor competition and high costs in NASA picking private companies to do big cost-plus development contracts, and cases where they did fixed-price contract bidding among a larger pool of competitors and got much better results.
sgt101 3y ago
This surprises me, I have seen ground penetrating radar results that have shown buried items which have then been dug up, why is this result different?
- throwup238 3y ago
  They’ve been calibrated on Earth for use on Earth.
  - czbond 3y ago
    Oh interesting - so Earth calibrated systems expect... a specific density for display of signals?
    - throwup238 3y ago
      Radio waves propagate at different speeds through different mediums so the GPR gain and time window have to be calibrated for each soil type and other environmental factors like how wet the ground is. Once calibrated, then any deviations become interesting. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of sensor noise.
      - neom 3y ago
        Are you insinuating that NASA sent an incorrectly calibrated device? I know NASA has its flaws but this seems like a stretch no?
        koheripbal 3y ago
        I think he means it would need to be calibrated on Mars as the exact ground density and composition isnt known from earth
        throwup238 3y ago
        Correct. The easiest way to calibrate a GPR is to stick a metal plate in the ground and cover it with a few feet of earth dug up on location. Can’t do that with some awkward rovers and an experimental helicopter. NASA can do some fancy signal processing to get some useful data but until its properly calibrated, any interpretation of that data especially visual should be taken with a Phobos sized grain of salt.

narag 3y ago

With manned missions on the horizon, are there any plans to settle the question for good? Once humans are living there for weeks (months?) it would be very hard to enforce a no-contamination policy.

gigglesupstairs 3y ago
Manned missions are not in fact on the horizon. At all.
- narag 3y ago
  I guess we have different notions of what the horizon is. For me is "in my lifetime". To put it in context: I watched the first Moon landing on TV as a child, so I'm used to wait.
  - ninkendo 3y ago
    If you are old enough to have watched the moon landings on TV, my bet is that we will not see a manned mars mission in your lifetime. (I have my doubts it will happen in the next 40 years.)
    - narag 3y ago
      Do you accept the bet to be paid in person? :) You all are focusing on labeling the time to humans in Mars. But how about the time to completely discard that life exists now in Mars? How much time would it take to design, build and send a mission of this nature? It's the ratio of the two times that matters.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      It's funny how much things change over a decade, yet it never feels like anything is happening on a day by day, or even year by year basis. Just imagine going back 10 years in time and trying to describe to yourself what the next 10 years holds. You'd probably think yourself crazy! But to the point, in 2011 the US passed a law banning China from participating in the not-so-international ISS. The arguments given were that China had nothing to offer, and implicitly - that they'd just steal everything. Today, just slightly more than a decade later - they have one of the most advanced space programs on the planet, have built, launched, and manned their own space station, executed sample return missions from the Moon (the first since 1976!), and more. What would you have thought the odds of that in 2011? And all of these things are the sort of stuff that is happening in just a decade. The world is changing extremely quickly (even if it often doesn't feel like it), and space tech is one of the fastest advancing industries right now. I think the best window into the future is the past. Look at the trajectory we're on, not necessarily just the US - but the whole world. It's a good one, at least as far as space goes.

api 3y ago

A probably dumb question: why don't these missions carry a microscope instrument and a drill? We know there is sub-surface ice or water (brine) at some locations. Bring some up and look at it. I ask because there's a minor conspiracy theory that's made the rounds that NASA either has these things on board secretly or deliberately does not include them because they don't want to actually find evidence of life. I find that pretty unlikely and figure it's probably a lot harder to build such an instrument and get useful results than you'd think.

XorNot 3y ago
Both these things are very likely to break down. Using a drill as a human with hands is easy. Using a drill on another planet where any jam or failure is permanent is staggeringly hard. A robot can't just chuck up a bit, or wipe down dust and dirt which is stopping something from working. Or quickly regrease a bearing. Ultimately one of the best arguments on favor of manned exploration is that despite our robotics, a human in a space suit with a shovel would get an incredible amount done in a few hours. EDIT: drills have flown, but they are limited in capability.
xwolfi 3y ago
There is no life on Mars, so it s probably too expensive to bring useless instruments ?
- Valgrim 3y ago
  We're not even sure there's no life on the moon. There could be liquid water in deep underground lakes and there would be no sign of it on the surface.
  - bregma 3y ago
    We're not all convinced there is life here on earth. Or at least intelligent life.
    - borissk 3y ago

maroonblazer 3y ago

I still get goosebumps watching video like this from the rover in TFA. It's on another planet. It's mind-blowing science non-fiction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8YubgIA_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8YubgIA_8

potench 3y ago
The article says the video is interpolated with AI. Why can’t we strap a GoPro on there and get some high quality 4K video footage?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- badcppdev 3y ago
  Insufficient bandwidth to get much 4K video back to Earth.
  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    Apparently using the mars orbiter as a relay they can get up to 30Mbps. I couldn't find out what the transmission rate for lander -> orbiter is though. However lander direct to earth is in the Kbps on a good day.
  - chanandler_bong 3y ago
    https://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html shows the current status of the DSN, including bandwidth for each stream. Pretty interesting.
- hackernoteng 3y ago
  Exactly. You can't trust any of it. Its all just CGI.

conductr 3y ago

Tangent: but in my layman understanding of all this, is it possible that we’re actually cross contaminating Mars with tiny amounts of earthly life? I know the travel and radiation probably makes it unlikely but also seems plausible to me a few specks of mold spores or DNA fragments could survive and be preserved in the cold of space/mars. Is it possible that in billions of years, when the sun has warmed and/or pulled mars closer, this seeds another earth-like evolution of life? It all seems improbable but nothing surprises me in space.

saalweachter 3y ago
The short answer is, yes, maybe. Probes intended to land on other planets are sterilized, I believe, to try to avoid such contamination. It's a long shot that such contamination is possible, and the sterilization probably isn't perfect, but there's a general consensus that it's probably not impossible, and hey, it'd be pretty dumb to at least not like wipe down the probe before shooting it into space.