In a recent paper led by my collaborator Dr Susanne Schwenzer and with a number of MSL scientists as co authors we outlined a scenario whereby heating related to the impact 4 billion years ago caused ‘hydrothermal’ flow of water through the crust. This could be one way of precipitating the clay at Mt. Sharp. Over the course of the mission we will be able to test hypotheses like this – thats the valuable thing about a lander mission, we get ‘ground truth’. We need hypotheses like this to structure our investigations but we can be sure that our ideas will evolve and change as we gather more data.
Monday 13th August Sol 7
About jbridges
This blog is a record of my experiences and work during the Mars Science Laboratory mission, from the preparation, landing on August 5th 2012 Pacific Time, and onwards... I will also post updates about our other Mars work on meteorites, ExoMars and new missions. You can also follow the planetary science activities with @LeicsPlanets Professor John Bridges, School of Physics and Astronomy
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