I have no idea where to post this, or if it is already posted :

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/program.pdf

All the abstracts in hyperlinked pdf.
All you need is Acrobat Reader, an internet connection and several hundred hours of free time

TheChemist: Thanks immensely for posting that. I almost missed this topic. I had been planning to attend the conference. It should be a pretty good one, considering all the amazing data collected over the past year.

...OMG, that reminds me, I forgot to register for it. I'm going to take care of that right now...

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/...5.download.html

You can download entire session's abstracts here as single pdf files,
rather than one extended abstract at a time.

Is anyone going except volcanopele?
Of course we would like to hear some details of what's going on

I am definitely going. I've scheduled a week of vacation from work and have registered for the conference. Now I have to pick which sessions to attend. Unfortunately, there are a number of interesting sessions scheduled concurrently. I guess I'll just have to play musical chairs, hopping back and forth to catch the best presentations.

I'm having a hard time setting priorities, but it seems clear that I must catch as many MER, Cassini, Huygens, and Mars Express topics as possible. If anyone has any suggestions for other sessions they think will be interesting, I sure would appreciate it if you would point them out to me. I'll try to post the most interesting news in this forum.

How nice, we 'll have two people that can give us the inside stories and the "feeling" of the conference.
Make a lot of notes please

I know a scientist who is going to be at the conference at the poster session about lunar impacts. His poster is entitled "Size Distribution of Lunar Basins." I found his idea very interesting; you may want to take a look at that while you're there. He also has some information beyond what is on his poster; ask him about his research on lunar thorium distribution.

Well, I ain't goin', but I've ALREADY read (or at least skimmed) every single 2005 LPSC abstract dealing with Mars (and, my God, are there a lot of them), the Moon, all the other planets and their moons, and the comets and KBOs. (I haven't yet summoned up the nerve yet to plow through the gargantuan swarm of usually boring abstracts on the asteroids and other aspects of the Solar System, but I will in time -- after all, I put myself through this every year). As you might expect, there were an awful lot of very interesting ones -- and while I can't write a piece on them for SpaceDaily before the actual conference because they're embargoed, I may take some time a little later to describe here some of the most interesting ones I've seen.

I'm pretty much a lurker here, having only posted a few times. I'm also going to LPSC. I went last year for the first time in 20 years. Went to a couple of sessions/events with Nick Hoffman, I'm not sure if he is going this year.

CosmicRocker - you can easily jump between sessions that are held in Salons A, B and C since they are adjacent. But there are other concurrent session in a nearby ballroom which involves a few minutes walk. The only bad conflict for me is Thursday afternoon for the third Cassini session in Salon B and the Martian Fluvial Features and Processes in the ballroom. The only other possible conflict is on Wednesday between the Huygens session and a MER session. But Huygens wins out. Get there early!

Also getting to the reception early on Sunday is good. I had a chance to talk to Nathalie Cabrol for a bit befor it got crowded.

Pete B:

Thanks for the information. I suspect Martian fluvial features & processes will beat out Cassini in my case, but I'm sure I'll have to hop over to Cassini for a few papers. But I'm with you on Hugens. I really want to hear everything they have to say in there.

I find Nick Hoffman's Martian models quite fascinating. I don't know if he was the first to point out the possibility of "cold and dry" outburst floods, but that seems to be a quite plausible hypothesis to me. I haven't heard enough from people considering the processes one would expect on a world loaded with dry ice.

I still haven't downloaded and printed off all of those abstracts. What happened to the good old days when they would send you a book with the abstracts when you registered?

Keep in mind though that MGS and Mars Odyssey have shown that most of the ice on Mars is H2O ice not CO2 ice. At the poles it is only a CO2 covering a few meters thick over water ice perhaps kilometers thick.
And outside of the poles over much of the planet there is a large percentage of water ice within a meter of the surface.
I'm interested in hearing the reports back attendees give on the meeting.


Bob Clark

Some questions to ask for people who might be attending:

1.)Why hasn't THEMIS been used to characterize White Rock? A poster to
this LPSC will argue Mars Express imaging suggests it might be
evaporitic after all.

2.)Does the poster suggesting thin liquid water films currently in
Gusev imply that that may actually have been mud or clay seen early in the
Spirit mission?

3.)Will Mars Express image the Malin/Edgett gullies in color?

cf.,
Newsgroups: sci.astro, alt.sci.planetary, sci.astro.amateur
From: rgregorycl...@yahoo.com (Robert Clark)
Date: 4 Dec 2003 12:13:36 -0800
Local: Thurs, Dec 4 2003 12:13 pm
Subject: Color image of Mars from Mars Express.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.as...eaf790f6aa4b68c

4.)Do the seasonal changes seen by GRS/HEND for water content near the equator suggest there could be precipitation there? Could this precipitation reach the ground as liquid during Summer?

Any others?


Bob Clark

Since the gamma rays and epithermal neutrons detected by instruments on Odyssey and Mars Express come from the top meter or less of the Martian surface, I think all that can be concluded is that there is abundant hydrogen in the shallow subsurface. I think that hydrogen is likely to be in the form of water ice. However, I don't think that data excludes the possibility of CO2 being present as well. But, I don't think surface conditions are favorable for the presence of CO2 ice, except near the poles.

We don't have any data on the composition of ices that may be present in the deeper subsurface. It seems that significant CO2 could be present at deeper levels. Mars should have had a lot of CO2 early in it's history. It seems possible that much of it may now be frozen and in the subsurface.

I don't want to put myself in the position of trying to defend Hoffman's ideas. I just think some of his ideas are plausible. Many of the ancient geomorphic features of Mars appear to be totally consistent with a water origin. But at the same time, many of them also seem consistent with an origin involving fluidized sediments supported by rapidly vaporizing CO2 as well.

They're not resolveable at the res of the MEX camera.

Doug

Large ones are resolvable in single filter images:

Nirgal Vallis (Released 27 March 2002)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020327a.html

But I haven't seen a multiband visible light image taken of the gullies - and that's after being in orbit for 4 years.



Bob Clark

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any multiband images of the famous "dark streaks" either. I found some single band images after a web search but no multiband images:

Arabia Terra (Released 16 October 2002)
"This image shows deposits in a crater located in Arabia Terra. Arabia is generally dust covered and dark streaks or dust avalanches are present in the crater walls. The dominant geologic process acting in this crater interior is wind erosion. The central crater deposits are eroded to form yardangs, or linear wind-sculpted hills that resemble an inverted boat hull. Deflation and abrasion are capable of eroding rock structures that are aligned parallel to wind direction. In the lower right hand side of the crater, a dark deposit has formed barchan dunes. These crescent shaped dunes have 'horns' that point downwind indicating general northwest to southeast wind direction. These dark sands probably played a role in the erosion and formation of the yardangs."
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20021016a.html



Bob Clark