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Wired Science's most popular stories of 2009 featured a wide range of topics including sharks, zombies, spiders, meteor showers and strange clouds. But this year, we seemed to have homed in on two of your favorite topics: spiders and space.
Among the top stories, we've got some very big and very old spiders, as well as one of our favorite mind-blowing space photos ever, Mars, Jupiter and the sun.
Here are the ones that caught the most eyes this year from No. 10 up to the most popular story of the year.
October 28 Ten months after officially giving up on getting Spirit out of the Martian sand trap that ensnared it last year, NASA announced the rover had made perhaps its biggest discovery in that very spot. Spirit's wheels dug up soil beneath the crusty surface that contains minerals thought to be hematite, silica and gypsum, which don’t dissolve easily in water. But just below this soil, there are layers of iron sulfate minerals, which do dissolve easily. These layers suggest water, maybe in the form of frost or snow, seeped into the ground relatively recently and carried the soluble minerals deeper into the soil. Sadly, this serendipitous discovery may be Spirit’s last. NASA hasn't heard from the rover since it went into hibernation for the Martian winter in March. Full story Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University
- Sleeping Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Liquid Water
October 28 Ten months after officially giving up on getting Spirit out of the Martian sand trap that ensnared it last year, NASA announced the rover had made perhaps its biggest discovery in that very spot. Spirit's wheels dug up soil beneath the crusty surface that contains minerals thought to be hematite, silica and gypsum, which don’t dissolve easily in water. But just below this soil, there are layers of iron sulfate minerals, which do dissolve easily. These layers suggest water, maybe in the form of frost or snow, seeped into the ground relatively recently and carried the soluble minerals deeper into the soil. Sadly, this serendipitous discovery may be Spirit’s last. NASA hasn't heard from the rover since it went into hibernation for the Martian winter in March. Full story Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University
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