Festoons And Ferric Sulfate Salts Keep Rovers Occupied

MARSDAILY

This image from the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the best examples yet seen in Meridiani Planum outcrop rocks of well-preserved, fine-scale layering and what geologists call "cross-lamination." Opportunity acquired this image of a rock called "Overgaard" at the edge of "Erebus Crater" during the rover's 690th Martian day (Jan. 2, 2006).

by Steve Squyres for Cornell University's Athena Mars Program
Ithaca NY (SPX) Jan 16, 2006
Good stuff is happening on both sides of the planet. At Meridiani, the main source of excitement continues to be the festoons. The low-light imaging we've been doing is great for bringing this stuff out, and we've come to realize that it's present in a whole lot of the rocks around us.

The real news, though, is that it looks like we're finally about ready to move the rover again. I can't give you a definite date, but I'd say that sometime next week is very likely. Our first move, of course, is going to be to get into position to get some nice MI mosaics on the festoons. The rock we're going after first is one called Overgaard.

At Gusev, a funny thing happened on the way to Home Plate. We swore we were just going to sprint for Home Plate and not stop for anything unless something extraordinary popped up. Then something extraordinary popped up. On our most recent drive, we hit some pretty soft soil and churned it up a bit. And when looked at the disturbed soil, we realized it was bright... really, really bright. Somehow our churning dug up something very different from everything around it.

Something like this has happened to us once before, at a spot just below Larry's Lookout that we named Paso Robles. Paso Robles was one of the most extraordinary finds of Spirit's mission to date. It was very light-toned soil dug up from just beneath the surface, and when we measured its composition we found that it was more than fifty percent salts. Most of it was ferric sulfate salts, and there were also some phosphate salts as well.

So what is this new stuff (which we have named Arad)? The same kind of salt? Something different? Similar concentration or even saltier? It was too tempting a target to pass up, and we're going to spend the weekend doing IDD work on it before moving on.

And then we'll be off to Home Plate again... really!

MARSDAILY

Spirit's Neighborhood In Columbia Hills

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 5, 2006
Two Earth years ago, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit touched down in Gusev Crater. The rover marked its first Mars-year (687 Earth days) anniversary in November 2005. On Nov. 2, 2005, shortly before Spirit's Martian anniversary, the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor acquired an image covering approximately 3 kilometers by 3 kilometers (1.9 miles by 1.9 miles) centered on the rover's location in the "Columbia Hills."