New Mars Forums

Don't shoot the messenger.  I'm not doing any hand-editting, just showing what the pictures tell us.

Why not?  It wouldn't take much of a temperature increase to begin dehydration, as low as 50 C for some of the ferric sulfates, and no higher than 300 C for some of the other sulfates found in the same hills.  Spirit has seen sulfates in many different positions around the Columbia Hills, so probably safe to assume these deposits are plentiful.  This stuff would be an easy and readily accessible resource, although it may be location specific.

They do seem to be slowing down with the updates, both the video Flight director reports and written accounts of the rovers.  But, they are still having press conferences on a fairly regular basis, but they've moved off video / NASATV and on to tele-conferences.  There are audio streams of the most recent pair are available on the JPL website ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/]htt … ultimedia/ ) from November 11th and October 8th.

There are a couple pieces of data that the RAT returns that will be included in the PDS release of data.  From http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missio … ve.pdf]Mer PDS Archive Docs:
Rock Abrasion Tool Experiment Data Records: time-ordered actuator current measurements, temperatures, and encoder values

They don't list any derived data products there, only the 'raw' data, but with proper calibration... (from "The Rock Abrasion Tool, Mars Exploration Rover Mission" Gorevan et al, 2003)

"From the motor currents, torque can be directly calculated and torque can be empirically correlated to the density and hardness of the rock. Combining these parameters, along with a close-up view from the Microscopic Imager (MI) of the fresh surface, one should be able to properly assess the compositional and the depositional histories of the rock."