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Article: Out Where We Belong.(studying the Gusev crater on Mars)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- July 26, 1999
- Author:
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At the end of Ma'adim Valley, beneath the encircling ramparts of Gusev, the delta's layers of sediment fan out across the basin floor. Once this whole basin was flooded, its waters kept warm, perhaps, by the volcanic fires of Apollinaris Patera, whose lava flows reach almost to its northern rim. Slowly the basin dried up; the waters sank to ever lower levels. Now they seem completely gone--unless, perhaps, their remnants form the icy cores of the strange rounded hills in the basin's heart. But once the waters were there, sheltering under a Martian sky.
Nathalie Cabrol has studied Gusev crater with her partner, Edmond Grin, for more than a decade. Her colleagues, ...