FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring …marsed.asu.edu/sites/default/files/msip_reports/Was...FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 One example of a channel

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 1. Introduction Our science question is "What creates Mars channels like Tinjar Valis: Lava or Water?" This question is important and interesting because It is important to answer this question because we want to know if Mars is suitable for humans to live on. Our main focus is to see if Mars has/had water. We want to know if Mars is suitable for humans to live on. Our main focus is to see if Mars has/had water. We also want to know about what we will need to learn about planets in the "Goldilocks" zone. We know that you can find planets using Kepler's Transit Tracks that might have liquid water. We plan to visit as humans and need to get better at traveling in space. We need to know about water on planets, now and in history, to figure out how to do that. We had hypothesis of what the answer(s) might be to our science question: Channels that look like Tinjar Vallis will have features like Earth channels formed by water. 2. Background We learned more about channels to find out about how they are made (Allison et al., 2010, page 411). Channels are what streams follow and make as they go downhill. Tributaries are small streams that flow into bigger streams. On Earth, channels made from streams may meander, twist and curving back on itself in a low gradient stream or river. The picture shows a meandering stream.

Braided Stream is a stream or river with multiple channels made by sediment being left behind as the water goes past.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013

We found an example of braiding on Mars near Tinjar Vallis that looked like Earth.

Tributaries on Earth and Mars look like they go from little streams to rivers. That’s one of the ways you can tell they are from water. Here are pictures of both.


One example of a channel formed on Earth is the English Channel. It is very big.

Another big channel on Earth, the Grand Canyon in the United States, shows terracing. We did not know about terracing before this project. A terrace is like a flat patio. They get formed because the rock or dirt is different hardnesses. We also found terracing on Mars, too.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 Here is the Grand Canyon.

http://i.imgur.com/FQOOak2.jpg And here is a picture of terracing on Mars from the better camera.


So terracing and braiding are two things that water can do. Some channels like this are formed by lava. This one in the picture is in Hawaii.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/hawaiivolcanoes/images/hawaii09.jpg Scientists study them to try to figure out what makes or made channels on Mars. Sometimes channels formed by water and by lava have similar shapes (NASA Mission News), and sometimes they are different (like the features in the Supplemental Material):


One thing that lava channels do is turn suddenly at right angles, called 90 degree turn. This would be easy to see on Mars because there is nothing blocking the view of the channel like plants.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/images05/051128fulgamite.jpg But you can see them when the lava is fresh on Earth, too.


http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/images05/051128fulgamite.jpg Another thing that many lava-carved channels have is rafting. How rafting occurs on Mars: rafts are made by cooling lava. The hard-rock rafts look like the top of brownies when they cool.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 Here is a picture of Tinjar Vallis, a region in Mars. There is a photograph and an artists’ rendition. We thought it was pretty at first and looked like water had carved it, but we didn't know for sure.

One of the things we want to know is what formed this channel. Facts about T.V.: it is in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars at Latitude: 28.150 and Longitude: 131.621. 3. Methods The spacecraft we used is called the Odyssey. The camera we are using is called the Thermal Emissions Imaging System. (About Themis and the Mars Odyssey Mission, http://themis.asu.edu/about)


We wanted to know what formed Tinjar Vallis, so we're focusing on the area around it. We wanted to check the region around Tinjar Vallis to see whether there are other features of water-formed channels nearby, like outputs or tributaries, braiding or terracing.

We ALSO wanted to look at different channels across Mars and see if they look like channels formed by water on Earth.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 We used the THEMIS data website and looked at the channels page. This was hard at first, but then the ASU researcher said we should collect examples and make a type of scrapbook. So we did. Some of us collected examples of braiding and terracing, and others of us collected shots of ninety-degree turns and lava rafting. Some of those came off the internet not from the THEMIS website. This helped us see examples so we could see what we were seeing.

So part of our research was looking at channels. We mapped where they were on a big map that the ASU researcher Swann sent Dr. Milks.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 When we looked across the channels on Mars, we split the class to look at different ones and see whether they had those features. We collected the image ID from the THEMIS website because that allows us and other scientists to reexamine the images we observed to check our data. Then we wrote down the latitude and longitude so we could put them all on the Mars map to see where they were. Then we had four columns, one for braiding, one for terracing, one for lava rafts to be seen, and one for ninety-degree turns. We put a 0 if we didn’t see them in a channel and a 1 if we did. This was a nice idea because then we could just add the parts. 4. Data We took information on over 50 places on Mars that the THEMIS website says have channels. Here is the map to show this. Sometimes they are really close together so you can’t see all the places as diamonds on this map here.

Sometimes, people though the same things were visible, but sometimes people thought different things. The picture from our slides shows what people thought was braiding really wasn’t. We had to talk after about how the pieces of hair are different from the finished thing in braided hair.


We used the CTX images from the THEMIS camera that we found using JMARS to look more closely at some of the places because they were hard to see. The CTX had higher resolution. Here is a high-definition picture of terracing that many people scored as rafting because the texture was hard from the less clear image.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 Here are some graphs we made. The table we copied from where we collected the data, and it is very big. The graphs show things clearer.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 This is our table. It is hard to see. The colors are where we tried to see things that people saw differently.

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FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 As for the other part where we looked near Tinjar Valis on JMARS, we found the following.

We did not agree what we saw here. Some groups saw braiding, some terracing, and some wondered about 90 degree turns.

One of us looked at Tinjar Vallis using the CTX camera. That group saw terracing.


Another group saw 90 degree angles near Tinjar Vallis but found that channel wasn’t connected, just near our adopted channel of TV.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 One of our teams also took some pictures and labeled them to show where they are in relationship to Tinjar Vallis:

5. Discussion Please see our data table in the previous section, because it is very big and hard to see. One thing we noticed was that we didn't plan ahead where the channels were, so we didn't get lots in one place on Mars.

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 We saw that, if you zoomed out over all of Mars, there were still a lot of places we didn’t really get to see closely.

One thing we learned is that we made the scrapbook pictures but didn’t know that the features were going to be so hard to see IRL (In Real Life) on the THEMIS and CTX images. The example in the Data is the one that says “sometimes people saw different things.” We were not expecting that to be true. It turns out that braiding was the hardest and we thought about everyday and science meanings of the same word. Dr. Milks showed us the other class data, for period 4, and we saw they put different things on their second graph. We put channels that had either water or lava features. The blue is water-features and the red is lava-features. The other class put ones with both. If we had done their way we would have seen ones where there was more data that was pointing to the same answer about lava or water carving it.


When we looked at Tinjar Vallis, this is what we saw. The arrows didn’t show well. Next time we will show the things we are pointing out.


What does it mean, we still want to know, if one channels seems to have things that either water or lava could make? We are still wondering what other resources are used by the scientists who study Mars for their jobs. However, the Terracing we saw in Tinjar Vallis makes us suspect that water, not lava, carved it. We showed that with the red arrows here.

Here is the other reason why we think so.


So we don’t see channels leading from the big volcano directly to Tinjar Vallis. This makes us think that either the volcano is old or that it is another clue that Tinjar Vallis was cut away by flowing water. Our results tell us that There are channels all over Mars, not just in one location. Here are some potential errors or problems with the work we did here. It is difficult to work together to figure out what things look like at first. Having multiple people look over the same image might be beneficial to our presentation so that we could decide together what we see. Also, the THEMIS pictures can be hard to see closely so we could have more teams focused on getting closer-better pictures with the CTX camera too. 6. Conclusions One question was: What processes form channels like Tinjar Vallis? We learned that, if you look closely and carefully, Tinjar Vallis has both of the two things that are signatures of water (braiding and terracing) we looked for but neither for lava (90 degree turns and lava rafting).

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 We also formed a hypothesis at the beginning that channels that look like Tinjar Vallis will have features like Earth channels formed by water. We saw lots of channels with different complex features... but we can't answer this question yet. If we had more time, we would look at more THEMIS pictures to get a bigger picture of channels across Mars. We would read what other scientists have written about this topic to learn more. We would also look at more pictures TOGETHER to see which features we thought were there. The class went into the new trimester knowing we were going to experience something new involving Mars that not all science classes get to experience. This trimester we learned how channels form and how they are made by water. Junior Matt McC. said "the coolest part of studying Mars was looking at all of the interesting pictures, and knowing that in 40 or 50 years people could be living on this distant planet." Thanks are going to Jessica Swann at Arizona State and Mars SIP, because Ms. Swann and the researcher really helped us make our ideas better and were nice when we were scared of talking. The THEMIS, NASA, and Odyssey teams also made the images and worked really hard to make sure that we could learn more about Mars and the space around the Earth. 7. References About THEMIS and the Mars Odyssey Mission. Retrieved April 20, 2013: http://themis.asu.edu/about Alison, M.A., DeGaetano, A.T., and Pasachoff, J.M. (2010). Earth science. Holt McDougal. Kepler: A search for habitable planets. Retrieved March 31, 2013: http://kepler.nasa.gov/ Mars Image Analysis supplemental materials. Retrieved April 15, 2013, from Arizona State University, Mars Student Imaging Project Web site: http://marsed.mars.asu.edu/mars-image-analysis. MaMars NASA Mission News: Lava likely made river-like channel on Mars. Retrieved May 2, 2013: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/mars-lava-channels.html Themis Image of the Day: Featured Image Channels. Retrieved May 7, 2013, from Mars Oddesy THEMIS website: http://themis.asu.edu/image_of_the_day/channels Watt, K. (2002). Mars Student Imaging Project: Resource Manual. Retrieved April

FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 15, 2013, from Arizona State University, Mars Student Imaging Project Web site: http://msip.asu.edu/curriculum.html.

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FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring …marsed.asu.edu/sites/default/files/msip_reports/Was...FINAL MSIP Report on Channels PERIOD 5, Spring 2013 One example of a channel