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#551 Re: Unmanned probes » Strange mars "artifacts"? » 2004-02-25 01:20:44
Luca, I've often said here at New Mars that I enjoy a good mystery or a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. But I'm having trouble seeing anything especially mysterious in these photos of yours.
I believe rock formations can often assume peculiar shapes and an experienced geologist would probably look at the erosional features you point out here and explain them quite easily. Unfortunately, I know little about geology and I can only make guesses at their origins, such as wind/sand or possibly water/sand erosion
However, even if we were to assume you are correct and that something has dragged over these surfaces many times to produce the grooves and angles, can you suggest anything which might have been responsible?
It sounds to me as though you're insinuating that some kind of animal may have made these 'tracks'. Or have I misinterpreted your comments?
???
Thats one of the problems in try to work out what some of the objects in the images mean. It would be so easy for someone in the media to pick up one of these images and start a mass wave of publicity of 'signs of past life found on Mars'. I too enjoy a good mystery (conspiracy theories bug me due to the number of kooks it attracts), but the formations seen in these images will likely be solved by geologists.
From a distance the images do give a 'dragged over' look, but when you look at the following [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … B031R1.jpg]image it reminds me of walking on a beach with outcroppings of sedimentary rock, hell, if I looked through my photo archives I'd probably find a coastal photo that had rocks eroded in a similar way to the image above.
My first sight of the 90degree erosion made me think of wind/sand, but this higher view of the rocks make me think its water erosion, and that would mean a good deal of water was once present at that location. That does not give me any great problems in thinking, I've thought for a while now as Mars being a fairly wet planet in its past (how far in the past is a different question all together though).
#552 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-25 00:48:47
That RATed BB as in [http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/1M1308 … 1.JPG.html]this nicely sharp image with the striations accross it look like it might have merely been scraped by the RAT and then dislodged and turned a bit. Note that the other BB on the right shown no such scratch marks. there doesnt seem to be any noticeable concentric layering inthe BBs, which would point to concretions, i hope im wrong, i hope these dont just turn out to be boring tectites...
Are tectites easily deformable? These BB's in the image link look more like they've been squashed in place likle the rest of the surface rather than scraped. It's such a pity that they can't pick items up and send them back. Any idea as to what size the microscope taking images at.
#553 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-24 10:39:22
Very unusual natural formations, IMHO.
Unusual yes, but then Earth has plenty of unusual natural formations that until you know how it was formed could be open to any explanation as to how it was formed. Just think of the giants causeway, say you had no knowledge of science or geology, you are walking along one day and you stumble across [http://www.globosapiens.net/pictures/gi … 1.html?c=1]this view, what would your first thoughts honestly be.
We are looking at Mars with 21st century eyes, but in many ways we are still like the hunter-gatherers wandering in search of food and coming upon sights that we are at a loss to explain.
As to the marked rocks, I am still of the opinion that it is naturally formed. I would like to be wrong however 
#554 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-24 06:49:04
Maybe this is the right place to post this question: this is the only serious&scientific mars forum I was able to find. I found another one, where poeple says they can see stairs, bricks, faces, plants and animals in spirit/opportunity photos...
What i THINK to see is strange, but not SO strange!
Look at this image:
(You can see an enlarged version [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 50R2M1.JPG]here)What I THINK I see is a strange "artifact": do you see that strange "90 degree rock" on the right? Doesn't it look like a rock eroded by repeated dragging of something heavy over it?
Maybe it could be erosion due to water or lava, but it is really strange.
If you look at some of the smaller rocks towards to foreground you can see similar erosion of the rocks. If it had only been the large rocks in the back of the shot I'd probably be jumping up and down thinking it was the result of something other than a natural occurance, as it appears in the other rocks it looks to be natural to me. I don't know how they became eroded in such a manner, does anyone know if a sandstorm can cut rock like that if it is a regular occurance? I'd like to say it had been cut away by water but that just wishful thinking on my part.
#555 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-22 14:13:14
Before assuming the "thread" in front of that stone came from bag fabric, I would have thought a similar examination of the torn edge of a bag be made for thread-appearance comparison. Why hasn't that been done--or at least been discussed--for goodness sake?
Have NASA posted any pictures on their site of the torn fabric edge? If so does anyone have a url for it.
#556 Re: Unmanned probes » Broken spherele has dark spot inside it???? » 2004-02-22 10:48:49
Could this dark spot be a fossilized egg yolk? Could it be a layered sediment from water flowing? Check it out. It is still attached to the bed rock:
[http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 33M2M1.JPG]http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery....2M1.JPG
It could be any number of things really, fossilized plant stem, geode, shadows from an uneven break (when I first looked at it closely you could almost imagine a spherical break into the end causing a dark spot and gradual lighter areas). I'd like to think it was fossilized plant or something similar, though it will probably end up as geological in origin.
#557 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-22 04:21:27
there is a "rind" or some sort of mineral coating covering both the spherules in the bedrock as well as the [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 3M2M1.HTML]bird-track cracks picture which also suggests they are concretions.
and about those bird tracks... theyer looking even more like termite galleries than the last pictures of Snout, they look a bit like fossilized remnants of worm-holes or rock boring creatures of some sort?
I'm not sure about the termite galleries, to me it looks like a softer material has eroded away leaving the holes behind. Not a very technical description *sorry*! If they had been made by rock eating termite (I typed termite eating rock three times my head is really not working today) I'd have thought you would see more holes at differing angles rather than them all being virtually inline with the surface, unless the smaller surface pockmarks are the result of termites and have since been filled.
It would be nice to have samples back on Earth for a more detailed look, however good the rovers are, its still not the same as a hand on approach - until they send a rover up with virtually every bit of lab equipment on that can be controlled by remote - now that would be some payload to deliver.
#558 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - rover » 2004-02-22 02:42:41
My original (Though someone else must have come up with this seperately) idea would be to carry a canister of liquid hydrogen with you and then, after slowing to a reasonable speed with airbags, inflate a ballon to reduce your speed further. A resonable amount of hydrogen could turn a 1,000 pound rover into a 1,000 pound rover with 900 pounds of positive bouancy. From there, just make sure the thing can withstand the impact at the end.
I was thinking last night along similar lines however I was trying to work out how helium would react. If the weight could be calculated correctly it could be used for things other than slowing the descent of the rover. Drop the whole bundle with the usual parachute to slow descent, then fill a balloon from canister of liquid helium (or whatever works best), if the weight is calculated correctly it would slowly lower the lander, once its safely down, release the lander and the balloon can rise with camera, sensors and transmitter sending back nice atmospheric data and some reasonable images.
Surely adding something like this to a billion dollar project would cost peanuts.
#559 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-22 02:33:30
That "Opportunity's anaglyph 23" you linked for us is an excellent picture! Thank you.
Something which caught my attention was at the top of that shot. It looks like some of those lighter coloured spherules are clinging to the almost vertical side of a rock face. They don't look like they've dropped out of the sky or been formed as part of a layering process, they look like they've 'deliberately' adhered to the side of the rock - like oysters or barnacles.
I'm beginning to wonder about those little 'blueberries'. ???
Your blueberries appear in a few images, but one of the images that anaglyph23 may have been taken from (theres a couple on the Nasa site that it could have come from) but [http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/galler … 88L7M1.JPG]on this one you can see a whole host of 'blueberries' in the top right. But across the image they appear to be on both the horizontal and vertical faces.
My first thought was that they were crater ejecta and that they adhered to the rock whilst hot, but I'm unsure about this at the moment (i've not been awake and conscious long!)
Not being a geologist (having only brushed the surface of that subject at uni) could the spherical items be a harder mineral or other material that has not erroded at the same rate as the rock surrounding it?
The easiest answer is if I just pop up and have a look.
#560 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-21 16:40:58
There's already a whole torn chunk of airbag lying on the surface in one picture. Evidently the bags were dealt some damaging blows during landing.
I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine a few individual fibres could detach from the frayed edge of a tear in the material and fall to the ground separately.
It seems like poor science to me if it is thread from the airbag that its contaminating the very thing the rovers have been sent to explore. We'll have to wait and see if they show up in further images to get a better look.
#561 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - rover » 2004-02-21 06:04:21
[http://www.space.com/businesstechnology … 40211.html]Read Me
*I don't recall seeing this item posted here before. My apologies if I've overlooked something.
To be sent to Mars in 2009. Will employ a Skycrane instead of air bags
I'd hope they could come up with an option other than crashing the delivery crane after its dropped its cargo. Seems like a long way to take all that weight only to destroy it, surely they could incorporate something else into the unit to make it more worthwhile. The technology probably isn't up to it yet, but it would be good for say the crane to be useable as a low level flier after dropping its cargo - a nice slow flight over some of the more difficult to reach areas with a couple of cameras onboard.
#562 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-21 04:24:04
Meanwhile, Spirit's [http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … A047R1.jpg]trench (356k) shows the same bright stuff...
I've had a look at the trench a couple of times now, the only obvious 'thread like' part I noticed was in the left hand third of the trench under either a rock or clump of soil. The contrast level in the image is such that it could either be something in the soil or the result of the images harsh contrast level.
If you look to the left of the white 'thread' a shadow line continues, this to me anyway suggests that its a mark left by the wheel. These marks continue throughout the trench to a lesser degree.
A high resolution image, with better contrast levels would be a lot easier to tell what it is though. All the same, these are nice images, and plenty of them to keep me busy for a while now.
#563 Re: Unmanned probes » Spirit & Opportunity *3* - ...continued from previous threads » 2004-02-21 02:29:10
The "thread" in the micrograph looks like a hair. Human hairs are about 50 microns in diameter.
The airbags are made from [http://www.vectranfiber.com/index1.html]Vectran fibers, which are about half that size, 23 microns in diameter.
im not sure how to deduce the size of the "thread" from the micrograph, anyone?
The thread to me looks like something in the optical path rather than something thats on the surface. Though if that was the case it should appear on all the images taken. Its a few year since I studied optics, but I'll try and calculate a rough size of the thread (it could end up as a guesstimate).