Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
This same NASA media release also announced that the Phoenix craft also has found calcium carbonate in soil samples on Mars. Such a discovery provides direct evidence that substances interacted with water in the past.
The discovery was made using Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) and the wet chemistry laboratory of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), both that are attached to the Phoenix robotic arm.
America's University of Arizona professor William Boynton, who is the lead scientist for TEGA, stated, "We have found carbonate. This points toward episodes of interaction with water in the past." [NASA]
The mass spectrometer on the TEGA found a match of the temperature at which calcium carbonate is decomposed and the temperature at which carbon dioxide gas was released from soil samples (which indicates decomposition of calcium carbonate).
In addition, the microscopy part of the MECA instrument measured a concentration of calcium that was identical to the concentration for a solution buffered by calcium carbonate.
The NASA article states, “Both TEGA, and the microscopy part of MECA have turned up hints of a clay-like substance.”
Michael Hecht, MECA lead scientist, states, “We are seeing smooth-surfaced, platy particles with the atomic-force microscope, not inconsistent with the appearance of clay particles.”
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona head the Phoenix mission program. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is directing the program.
The Mars mission of Phoenix is also a partnership of universities in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, along with the space-related agencies of the United States (NASA), Canada (Canadian Space Agency), and Finland (Finnish Meteorological Institute).
Scientists with the Phoenix spacecraft hope to be able to extend its mission through mid-November 2008. Its limitation will be the amount of sunlight hitting its solar arrays.
As the landing site of Phoenix gets into the colder season on Mars, less sunlight falls on its solar arrays. Eventually, not enough solar energy will be produced and converted to electricity to operate the spacecraft.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
