Diving Into That Lake on Mars

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Technology, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2018

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our world was rocked by last week’s announcement of good radar evidence for a liquid water “lake” under the Red Planet’s south pole. Senior Editor Emily Lakdawalla introduces us to the story that is then taken up by two of host Mat Kaplan’s favorite Martians. The Goddard Space Flight Center’s James Garvin headed NASA’s Mars exploration program, while NASA Ames astrobiologist Chris McKay co-founded the Mars Underground more than 35 years ago. Look up! Mars is still close by, and the Perseid meteor shower is around the corner. Bruce Betts gives us the What’s Up lowdown. Learn more at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0801-2018-garvin-mckay-mars-lake.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The best conversation you'll hear about that Lake on Mars this week on planetary radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of of the Planetary Society, with more of a human adventure across our
0:16.1	solar system and beyond.
0:18.3	No boast.
0:19.3	I really think my conversation with Jim Garvin and Chris McKay about what's going on deep
0:24.8	under the Red Planet South Pole is amazing. They even came up with some new ways to
0:29.7	investigate that supposed body of liquid water as we were speaking.
0:34.0	Senior editor Emily Lochuwala will get us into the topic in a few seconds,
0:39.0	but don't forget that we've also got Bruce waiting in the wings to deliver the goods on a still spectacular night sky,
0:46.0	along with the New Space Trivia Contest, a really easy one this time.
0:50.0	Emily, a lake on Mars. You wrote about it in a terrific blog post that went up on July 25th at
0:57.2	planetary.org. Of course the world now is excited about this. Give us a recap. What found what on Mars? We discovered
1:06.0	water on Mars again. Again.
1:10.0	That would never work. So yeah, it seems like we discover water on Mars at least once a year.
1:15.2	Journalists like me are a little bit jaded about water on Mars discoveries,
1:18.4	but I saw a lot of scientists on Twitter saying, oh, boring, another water and more story, wait, it's liquid?
1:25.0	And that was the reaction in general.
1:27.6	So the discovery was made by the Marsys radar sounder instrument on the Venerable Mars Express spacecraft,
1:34.3	spacecraft, the European spacecraft that's been in orbit
1:37.0	since 2003.
1:38.6	They used this ground penetrating radar instrument
1:41.6	to find a very reflective horizon at the base of the
1:45.6	South Polar Cap.
	...

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