This is awesome! I love that Mars continues to baffle, astound, and fascinate us. Sometimes our 21st century hubris makes us think we are reaching some kind of peak knowledge, but moments like this prove that we yet know so little.
In particular, the geology of Mars in an incredibly fascinating topic. If you're looking for a good primer on the subject, I highly recommend Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton.
Mapping Mars contains a history of the science, highlighting the major contributors to the field and augmented with interviews from such notable science fiction authors as Kim Stanley Robinson. A good discussion is, for example, how much water exists on the planet. Consensus is now that there is water somewhere, but exactly how much water, where it sits, how it flows: great questions that are attacked with lucid explanations.
Hats off to NASA and human curiosity for this grand adventure.
In the Mars trilogy (Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson, the term "areology" was coined for describing geology-on-Mars. I always thought that was a great word.
Your point is a good one. However just to interject tangentially, hubris is demonstrably not a 21st century phenomenon, nor imho will it cease to be a phenomenon in any future period of human existence.
"Peaks of knowledge" have existed throughout our collective history and the single uniting feature of each is that they are never peaks. Local maxima perhaps, but the upslope of discovery always reasserts itself eventually. Afaik, nothing indicates that the future will differ in this regard.
In particular, the geology of Mars in an incredibly fascinating topic. If you're looking for a good primer on the subject, I highly recommend Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton.
Mapping Mars contains a history of the science, highlighting the major contributors to the field and augmented with interviews from such notable science fiction authors as Kim Stanley Robinson. A good discussion is, for example, how much water exists on the planet. Consensus is now that there is water somewhere, but exactly how much water, where it sits, how it flows: great questions that are attacked with lucid explanations.
Hats off to NASA and human curiosity for this grand adventure.