Wires, LATimes, USA Today: A case of confusing timing. More ice found on Mars. Or is that Moon news…???
One cannot order the news cycle to schedule its items to minimize confusion. Today we’ve already had a post, scroll a bit down, on news that either the world is accelerating toward hothouse hell, or it is cooling (or both), take your pick. NOW on the same week that ice on our Moon comes out, NASA pops up, waving its hands, and saying we have big splotches of near-equatorial ice on MARS!! Many readers will see the Mars heds and think they’ve already read about that. The news is in Science, from a team led by a U. of Arizona man.
So it goes. The Mars news is not something that demands heavy reporting. Pictures pretty much tell the story. Five fresh craters from meteor strikes, photographed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, show what looks like layers of something pure white in the newly exposed soil. They indicate shallow ice exists extensively, not just near the poles.
A question is whether reporters will help readers out and, while describing the Mars discovery, gently mention that Moon water is in the news, too.
Stories:
- AP: Spacecraft spies frozen water in Martian craters ; Really, “ice” would do. There are all sort of ices, in space and here on Earth, but the default unadorned meaning of ice is water ice.
- Christian Science Monitor – Peter N. Spotts: NASA finds water ice in Mars craters ; Oh.
- USA Today – Dan Vergano: More ice discovered on Mars ; That’s a good hed – it indicates this is incremental news. He also explains succinctly that the ice is ephemeral and may be refrozen sublimation, not the exposure of a big solid slab of ice.
- Reuters – Chris Wilson: NASA finds ice on the moon and on Mars. Somebody got smart in tying the two events together. Hmmmm … it was a NASA instrument and some US investigators on the Moon news, yes, but oughtn’t India get primary credit? It’s a holy grail anyway, it says here.
- Nat’l Geographic News – Brian Handwerk: NEWS MARS PICTURES” Water Ice Exposed by Meteor Strikes ; Nice what-if? Speculation here, too, on the old Viking landers’ bad luck.
- LA Times – John Johnson Jr: Ice on Mars more extensive than thought ; Nothing on the Moon water, which Johnson also reported, but a good passage explaining how new, and small, these craters are.
Grist for the Mill: JPL/NASA Press Release;
Charlie Petit
