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Posted by windbag on February 19, 2008, 1:28 pm
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On Feb 18, 1:14=A0pm, david.willi...@bayman.org (David Williams) wrote:
> -> In terms of potential exploratory goals, Ceres far outweighs Mars in
> -> the most important categories.
>
> Why so? Ceres is just an asteroid. Sure, it's the largest one (unless
> you count KBOs as asteroids, which some people do), but there's no
> reason to think it is spectacularly different from other asteroids,
> some of which have been visited by spacecraft already. It's too small
> to have had a watery past, as Mars had, so it's unlikely to have any
> kind of biological remains.
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0dow
It still retains most of its surface ice, so there might be some areas
near vulcanism where liquid water has been present for long periods.
Composition of liquid water in such locations could be the determining
factor in regards to possibilities of early Martian life.
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