http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001526/

As Tom’s link implies, AI has been slow on delivering on its early promise. You’d think anyone who comments on a blog would be capable of noticing that computers are stupid. Expert systems are a million miles from HAL.

Name any industrial or commercial application currently using artificial intelligence.

http://www.cleverace.com/AI_and_expert_systems.htm

The first expert systems appeared in the late sixties. Today, they exist in many forms, from medical diagnosis to investment analysis and from counseling to production control. Due to the advances of the last decade, today’s expert systems users can choose from dozens of commercial software packages. At present, we accept as routine such expert systems as weather forecasting, online mapping and driving directions, diagnostic systems for automotive repair shops, and so on.

Many large corporations use expert systems in their business. The list of the companies using expert systems technology is long and varied: NASA, HP, Lockheed, Boing, DaimlerChrysler AG, various power, gas and oil stations, etc.

Name any industrial or commercial application currently using artificial intelligence.

> It is now 40 years since the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” was released and NASA still has nothing remotely resembling the HAL 9000 computer.

Nobody anywhere has anything like HAL 9000.

If you poke around on the Phoenix site that you linked you will find a mission overview and, as I recall, a fairly detailed press pack. I havenâ??t had time to follow up and understand the detailed science objectives of Phoenix, but Iâ??m pretty sure itâ??s a lot more sophisticated than Viking.

Really? What makes you think that? The Vikings had 4 biology experiments on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Biological_Experiments

1.) Gas Chromatograph / Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) – failed to find any organic molecules

2.) Gas Exchange (GEX) – Look for gas released from a soil sample after providing a nutrient and water

3.) Labeled Release (LR) – Look for radioactive gas given off by a soil sample to which C-14 tagged nutrient was added

4.) Pyrolytic Release (PR) – Look for radioactivity in the soil sample after being exposed to a C-14 tagged atmosphere

The LR experiment produced positive results. Later it was hypothesized that oxidizing chemicals in the Martian soil were the cause of the positive LR results. You would think that after all these years NASA would be interested in at least repeating these same experiments in the Martian polar region to see if the same results are obtained. Or to track down what the oxidizing agent is (it is still unknown).

Now, this is what is on Phoenix: TEGA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_and_Evolved_Gas_Analyzer

It appears to be a slightly upgraded version of just one of the Viking experiments (GCMS). There is no C-14 tagged nutrient, no C-14 tagged atmosphere, no C-14 tagging at all. What makes anyone think this is a step above Viking? It’s clearly not.

Pre-programmed algorithms updated from afar and transmitted via radio to tell the arm where to go and sample, checking out the systems prior to using them, looking around with the cameras prior to digging – all sorts of reasons why things take time.

Remember, the planned operational lifetime of the lander is only 90 Martian sols (about 92 days). One third of the planned mission is already over and they have just deduced the presence of water ice – not directly measured it. Also, I can’t help but notice the almost total lack of AI (artificial intelligence) on the Phoenix lander. It is now 40 years since the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” was released and NASA still has nothing remotely resembling the HAL 9000 computer. Phoenix appears to be a total dummy – it can’t make any decisions on its own and it must wait for direct instructions from humans on Earth before it does anything. Totally depressing given what I was expecting in my youth.

Which leads to the rhetorical question, “How does it feel to be frozen?”

Then RL said: “… to go from the solid state to the gaseous state and skip the liquid.”

Which should be followed by something like, “Now if I can just keep it from exploding.” (then he puts on a pair of goggles)

If you’re confused then you’ve never seen (or aren’t thinking about) “Real Genius”.

On an unrelated topic: I’ve been watching “Firefly” for the past couple of nights. You’re right, BA, it’s awesome.

No he doesn’t (not to me). What he sounds is concerned that these findings are being misrepresented and overhyped. “We found water ice on Mars.” Uh, we knew it was there. We just got pictures of it up close.

Tom Marking said:
> I’m just so surprised that they have to use deductive reasoning to determine the presence of water ice. I would have thought that with all the high-tech gadgetry onboard the spacecraft this determination would have been a slam-dunk.

I don’t think it’s a matter of being forced to use deductive reasoning, I think it’s a matter of serendipitous images showing evidence of water ice before the experiments are conducted.

> I don’t know, I just can’t get all that excited about this mission when it takes them 30 days 3 hours 9 minutes 5 seconds into the mission before they discover water ice on the planet when earth-bound astronomers have known it existed for decades.

Pre-programmed algorithms updated from afar and transmitted via radio to tell the arm where to go and sample, checking out the systems prior to using them, looking around with the cameras prior to digging – all sorts of reasons why things take time. You’re not happy because Phoenix isn’t like walking out the hatch, grabbing a shovel, and scooping up a pile of the first spot you see. Great. That’s why we need human explorers on Mars. For robotics, you get a slightly slower pace.

> Is there anything on that bucket-of-bolts that wasn’t on Viking 1 and Viking 2? It seems like TEGA isn’t any more sophisticated than what NASA had on the Vikings.

I’m not certain what Viking had vs. what Phoenix has. However, unexpected hardware difficulties with the oven doors is contributing to the delay, as well as data transfer problems.

>It has something like 8 ovens and when each has been used only one time that’s the end of the experiment.

That was curious to me as well, but there are practical concerns. First, the intent is to have 8 separate, independent samples. The problem is there is no easy way to clean an oven once it has been used in order to make sure the second use is not contaminated from the first use. Ergo, separate ovens. Then add in that given the location at the pole the lander will likely not survive the Martian winter and it makes sense to have a limited number of one-time-use ovens that provide independent sample analysis, which also gives redundancy. If oven doors on 1-3 and 6-8 work properly, then the glitches in doors 4 and 5 won’t be so bad a loss. Of course since we don’t know why 4 and 5 aren’t working, that suggests we may have troubles with the others as well. That does not bode well.

quasidog said:
>I have often wondered if the patterns in the ground that are attributed to flowing water might not be another type of liquid flowing.

My dad had that same question. I finally got the opportunity to ask Steven Squyres that question. His answer was given the conditions on Mars and the observed patterns, it is difficult to see how it could be anything else. Wind couldn’t create the patterns demonstrated, it would have to be something a lot more dense. Whatever it was, where did it all go? The thought is that water might be trapped below the Martian surface, but also some of it got stripped away into space with the atmosphere.

CafeenMan said:
> What’s to say they weren’t little chunks of rock that blew away?
> Am I missing something?

First, the atmosphere on Mars is very thin, so the wind is very weak. Even a fast wind is weak. Second, there are no indications in the pictures of tracks or wind effects. There are no marks of a rock rolling across dirt, no loose dust. No data indicating being hit by a dust devil. What you see is lumps there and then not there. The white stuff that is exposed has a reduced visibility, as if exposed ice has sublimated and the dirt around it is left behind.

We knew, but we didn’t KNOW. That’s what the droid was for.

So now the droid has dug a trench and watched ice sublimate. We’re almost completely sold. We’re 99.44% convinced. What else could it be? But I still want to a scoop shoved in the oven. I want a spectral analysis of the white stuff. That’s when we KNOW it’s water.

Not only that, but the systems checks and maneuvers take for-ev-er because you do NOT want to make a mistake when the craft is so far away. They have to look around, stretch things out, take their time… and yet the scientists and engineers themselves hardly have time for sleep because they are so busy with these tasks.

I only know this from a colloquium that Steve Squyres gave here about a year ago.

http://www.stevethecat.com/mars.htm

You probably could, but this was a serendipitous discovery. The chunks were found when digging a trench. The trench was dug to test the composition of the soil. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the oven used for that purpose. Had it worked as planned, ice would have been found in that sample.

It was only the difficulties with that unit that required deductive reasoning in the first place.

Anyway, the story I read stated they inferred there is water because small particles that might be ice were there and then they weren’t. Therefore it is ice that melted.

Maybe I’m missing something but that seems like incredibly weak “proof.”

What’s to say they weren’t little chunks of rock that blew away?

Am I missing something?

Also, to address quasidog, there have been several observations (I believe infrared and radio waves) in the past several decades that conclusively show it is good old H2O:

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Marspoles.html

Although if you’re talking about what Phoenix is scraping against, Phil’s answer about sublimation is more sophisticated than anything I can offer.

It seems like TEGA isn’t any more sophisticated than what NASA had on the Vikings.

If you poke around on the Phoenix site that you linked you will find a mission overview and, as I recall, a fairly detailed press pack. I haven’t had time to follow up and understand the detailed science objectives of Phoenix, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot more sophisticated than Viking (like both you and Phil Plait, I’m having trouble getting my head round the hoopla about ice, and want to understand what the next step is supposed to tell us).

One of the big problems with landers like Phoenix is that you can’t land, take a look around, and then decide what experiment you’d like to do. You can only do the experiments you take along. (This is one of the main arguments for a sample return mission, though the cost is frightening.) Inevitably that’s going to seem limited and lacking foresight at some point.

Can you think of anything else? Remember, you’d expect to find it in Mars’ atmosphere in at least trace amounts, and I’ve covered nearly all of them above.

If anyone could explain it clearly, why it has to be water, I’d really like to know ;p

*sarcasm tag, for the sarcasm-impaired*