What kinds of landforms?
NC: Streamlined terraces, for instance; or things looking like shorelines, which are more ambiguous because they are very fragile things; and alluvial fans, things that look like deltas. Now, with MOC images, we have very good evidence that there are some very beautiful deltas on Mars. AM: But at the time, not everyone agreed that these were water-formed landforms. NC: No, and they still don’t today. This is just an hypothesis. But looking at the evidence, Edmond and I came up with a scenario. Other people looking at the same evidence have come up with other scenarios. Today, what we think is a potential delta in Gusev, even some people on our team disagree with. That’s why it’s so interesting to be there and to be able to test hypotheses. But if we leave Gusev with evidence that it’s a big pile of volcanic ash, I’m not going to take that personally. Because we didn’t go to Gusev because I wanted to. We went because Edmond and I argued that this was an interesting place. Other people c
