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Posted by: Sunspot Mar 29 2004, 12:43 PM

Opportunity has moved on to the the small rock visible out on the plains, looks similar to the rock at the outcrop. It looks like the airbags may have broken a small piece off when they hit it.

Posted by: jmknapp Mar 29 2004, 04:35 PM

I made a color composite of another view of this area. Result is weird, but FWIW:



Full size:

http://copperas.com/astro/bagrock3_uncal.jpg

Image info for: 1P133785916ESF08AMP2571L4M1
Spacecraft: OPPORTUNITY
Camera: PANCAM, left
Spacecraft clock: 133785916 (seconds since January 1, 2000, 11:58:55.816 UTC)
Product type: EDR sub-frame
Site number: 08
Drive number: AM
Command sequence number: P2571 (PMA or remote sensing instrument) PANCAM
Producer: MIPL/JPL
Acquisition time (Earth): Sun Mar 28 17:33:09 EST 2004
Acquisition time (Mars): Sol 63 14:05:29


Look like a piece of the outcrop (note blueberry on top).

Posted by: remcook Mar 29 2004, 05:50 PM

the bounce mark should be in front of the rock right?

if I look at this:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/059/1P133430467EFF0830P2557L7M1.JPG

or is it approaching from another direction?

BTW Opportunity got there pretty quick!

Posted by: jmknapp Mar 29 2004, 06:27 PM

In the color shot above, note the three-pronged feature on the soil. The same feature can be seen in the b&w shot upper left. So that is something on the soil, not the bounce mark in the foreground.

I find the "halo" on the soil surrounding the rock (color photo) puzzling.

Posted by: remcook Mar 29 2004, 06:54 PM

to me, the 'halo' looks like the shadow of a hole in which the rock is lying. Like the rock has been impressed sideways and from above, shifting it through the soil.

Posted by: slinted Mar 29 2004, 07:16 PM

I think this may be yet another huge find for opportunity:
In the colorized version below, it looks like the top layers are a different color than the underlying layers, and the brightness might be erosion from those top most layers, leaving the reddish material to erode into the 'shadow' close by. Also, it would appear the lower layers have blue berries in them as per the 2 small bright round spots within the lower layer. I wonder if we're not looking at a rock, but rather something poking out from under the regolith... (I had to chop the L7 frame, and lower its brightness significantly since it was missing portions of the data...which seems to overly brighten any frames where that occurs, I'm curious also why the L2-L6 were taken at half frame and the L7 wasn't, thats very unusual).
As with all my images, this isn't real color...but it does help to identify color differences, which are real.

Posted by: slinted Mar 29 2004, 07:59 PM

here's a false-color image using the Right camera frames, which i fed into my normal colorizer substituting R2 for L2, R3 for L3...it doesn't say much except that color differences would be places where there is variation between infrared spectrum in the frames. Still a distinctive color to the three ridges coming off the rock to the left and between the top area and the lower layers.

Posted by: David Mar 29 2004, 11:06 PM

I'm no geologist, but it certainly looks as if the rock has a cap of layers of a different material -- the white and blue in slinted's false color image -- on top of another layered reddish rock with "blueberries" in it very similar to the ones in Eagle crater. I wonder whether that "bluish" rock could be the source of the hematite and whatever other minerals the "blueberry" concretions are composed of? I guess we'll know in a few more weeks.

Posted by: djellison Mar 30 2004, 10:17 AM

I've gone off using the Haemetite as a grey benchmark (blueberries my arse)

Posted by: Marzipan Mar 30 2004, 09:35 PM

Hi all
to me this looks like an airbag rupture. Perhaps it's where that 'bunny rabbit' came from? Anyhow, you could imagine after many bounces, the layers would be getting a little thin on the airbag protection front and one last stone punctured a cell, the escaping gas then blowing the 'dust' off the more static under-surface. ??

Ian

Posted by: MizarKey Mar 31 2004, 07:44 PM

Based on Doug's image that shows both the rock and the bounce mark, it appears the lander was coming in from the upper right to lower left and was probably moving fairly slow by the time it got here...slow enough that it only rolled another 20 feet or so into the crater (still can't get over the fact the thing landed in the tiny crater on this flat plain).

From the angles it is possible but not probable that the 'flow' we see in the upper left of the image would have been caused by a ruptured airbag.

It makes me wonder, if they hadn't landed in Eagle crater, but instead just rolled to a stop out in the flat somewhere...would they have roved over to the larger crater early on and studied it after doing some brief soil science? Who knows? We could have been at the big crater already for weeks.

Eric P / MizarKey

Posted by: jmknapp Apr 7 2004, 03:39 PM

On Sol 72 (yesterday), Opportunity reportedly did a "crush and go" by driving over Bounce and JPL was eagerly awaiting rear hazcam shots which would show the result.

Two rear hazcam shots were released today, an L/R pair showing this scene:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/r/072/1R134591142EFF1000P1312R0M1.HTML

Bounce has disappeared into the rear-view mirror at that point. This shot was taken at 4:04pm, evidently at the end of the crush-n-go drive. So where are the post-crush shots of Bounce?

No huge deal--just interesting how the RealTime™ public data releases flow in non-random ways.

Posted by: djellison Apr 7 2004, 05:47 PM

Indeedey. Realtime™ is very odd. I was proven wrong with the imagery overlooking Bonneville - and to be honest, some imagery does come down the pipe at very VERY strange times. I think much of the monster-trucking info will have been voltages and rocker angles more than imagery though

Doug

Posted by: remcook Apr 7 2004, 06:37 PM

I was wondering about those post-crunch shots. There also seems to be a gap in the rear hazcam images at Sol 69 (i.e. no images at all there, whereas every other sol there are 2). Coincidence?

In the progress reports they specifically say they will look at the hazcam images to see if they have succeeded.