Rovers on Mars

Yeh, and don't make us come up there to fix you, or we're really gonna be pissed.

no tv for you.!

There is also a hypothesis that a solar event on the last Wednesday might have played a role in the flash memory malfunctioning of Spirit.



(A link to a color image:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040126a/MERB_Sol1_Postcard-B002R1_br2.jpg )

The layered Mars rock "may" be sedimentary related with past water.
(As I have some experiences of rock climbing, I can imagine the firm touch of sedimentary layered rock.)

funny thing is that when I first saw those pix, I thought of fused sand (which goes with the impact crater) instead of bedrock. Of course, if it were still fused sand, that crater'd have to be pretty recent.

And that image you posted, Satt, looks way more like bedrock than the one's I saw online earlier today.

It's all still so magical.

Mmmmmm, sedimentary rocks ... you know what you sometimes find in sedimentary rocks (at least on Earth) ... FOSSILS! Now wouldn't *that* be a shocker

Not that I think it's likely or anything, but who knows. We've never poked around on Mars before, so it's possible that ancient Mars had a lot more than microbes, it *could* have had a Cambrian explosion for all we know. It could have been on exactly the same track as Earth, up until its geosphere changed and wiped everything out (and we would have no way of knowing this without looking far more closely than we ever have before).

Sorry... just indulging in a bit of dreaming

Why stop there... maybe we will find pottery shards...

Ok, point taken. I guess the farther we go, the less likely things become (probably by quantum leaps).

But if they find a fossil you're gonna have to buy me a beer

At first sight of the initial photo, I could notice it was bedrock firmly rooted on the site. I have keen eyes in rock from my experience. In climbing it is vital to yor life to tell firm rock from another.

satt, where did that last shot you posted come from/ was it the crater edge ? or is it a newer pan of some different area. To me it looks like two kinds of fractureson igneous rocks like aa. the layers that look like sed rocks could be exfoliar fractures and the straight lines that break these into blocks could be later joints cross cutting the earlier and reflecting some uplift or bedrock motion.
though, I have to admit, it would be really neat that they were sedimentary.
Hey brown , howbout if those rocks are an ancient fire pit?

You can easily see that it came from the second quadrant of the following.

yeh, the whole shot even looks more like exfoliar jointing. its common of certain types of igneous rocks. the rock breaks off like the skin of an onion. It will be neat if they get that golf cart right up to the outcroppings and take close in pix of the cracks and joints

If Opportunity is inside a crater which is inside another crater, then these rock formations could be something never seen on Earth: Shock melted rock exposed through multiple impacts.

Also, it stuck me the other day just how hard it will be for the Rover to do the things which Geologists here take for granted. For example, if those rocks were sedimentary, then a person might walk up to them and scrape a pick through some exposed debris, or tap the rocks to look for weakness and then use a pick to exploit any exposed cracks. A human would quickly pry up a piece of rock and roll it around to examine it, but the rover will have a very hard time doing this.

In part it's amazing how advanced those rovers are (and how far robotics has come in such a short time), but it's also amazing how far they still have to go to match the interactive state which we accomplish with ease.

Farmerman, Satt and Rosborne et. al.

I just want to say how much I enjoy your informed observations and conjectures on this thread. It is neat to be able to discuss this with people who have geology experience.

Well, I'm no geologist, or rock climber, but I did my fair share of fossil hunting when I was younger.

I'm enjoying this thread as well, and it's nice to have a physics teacher with us (EBrown)

Yep - you guys are cool! I have a 20 year old minor degree in geology and you guys remind me how much I have forgotten. :wink:

You won't hear much from me, but I am happily reading along.

aw shucks, bein a geologist just allows me to not have to do anything useful.
When i said the joints looked like onion skins , this is common in piles of rock from multiple lava flows or ash falls, it is sort of a sedimentary rock technically. I would love to see that its more wind or water deposited, but well have to get closer and see it in 3 dimensions better. As long as we keep getting pix , Im a happy little nocker.
i sawa cartoon with the rovers camera pointing one way at a pile of rocks and a bunch of aliens behind , mooning it and giving it the finger. Such rich humor.

Can't wait to hear more detail from the little guys. Did I read that Spirit was coming back to the realm of useful?

http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html

"SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2004 1154 GMT (6:54 a.m. EST):
Scientists just proclaimed that Opportunity has verified the existence of gray hematite at the landing site. This is a mineral that usually, but not always, forms in the presence of water."

This is another possible proof of past water, in addition to the layerd sedimentary rock.