http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24773693

However, later in response to a question for clarification on that temperature at about 22 minutes into the teleconference, Grotzinger gave the temperature as 276 degrees Kelvin. This is about 3 degrees C, or 37 degrees F.
The temperatures are expected to go higher as we get into Spring at the landing site.

Bob Clark

A liquid water component to clouds and fogs on Mars.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-liquid-water-component-to-clouds-and.html

Bob Clark

The panoramic image, attached below, shows what appears to be “haze” at the base of the mountains in the distance in Gale crater. This was predicted prior to landing:

Pink skies, water ice haze in forecast for Curiosity landing.
12:56 PM, Aug 5, 2012

“PASADENA, CALIF. — Expect pink skies with a chance of a water ice haze over Gale Crater Monday when NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover arrive at the red planet.
“Seasonal winter temperatures are expected to be a balmy 10 degrees Fahrenheit when Curiosity touches down at 3 p.m. local Mars time.”

It is important to realize that clouds, fogs and hazes can have some proportion of liquid water even well below freezing temperature. This is well known to happen when salts are dissolved in the water through freezing point depression. But it can also happen with pure water through supercooling.
The temperature at which supercooled liquid water can occur can even be below -40C, which coincidentally is also -40F:

Supercool Water.
Posted: 11/28/11

Liquid water as cold as minus 40 F has been found in clouds. Scientists have done experiments showing liquid water can exist at least down to minus 42 F.

Bob Clark

The objectives are:

1.Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials.

2.Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (biosignatures).

3.Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils.

4.Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes.

5.Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.

6.Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

Good to see you on the Zone.

Arf

Bob Clark

Perhaps you are reading too much into a few comments. I’m no planetologist myself, but I always had the impression of whether or not there is contemporaneous life on Mars to be far from settled. The conditions there now don’t rule it out, and since Viking, the unusual soil chemistry seems to have frustrated all our prior attempts to find out.

Personally, I believe there is no life there now, but there may have been in the past. But searching for fossil microbes is a very different mission, and may even be beyond our technical capabilities.

For the time being, perhaps the best we can do is to try to nail down what the current Martian environment is like, and to try to gather what evidence we can of what it was like in the past. But I must concede, what we expect (or hope!) to find is going to inevitably influence what it is we look for, and how.