Hmm, thinking more about the missing areas on the recently downloading images, those are caused by transmission problems (noise, probably) rather than a problem with the imager itself, aren't they? So I suppose that JPL just wasn't too concerned about the integrity of the images and just wanted to get them offloaded.. I will freely admit that at this point I may be completely wrong altogether. At least I tried.

So far as I understand Flash Memory, you have to make an active effort to delete any data, and that takes time and effort (not least the considerable effort required to ensure that you delete the right data!). Additionally, some early forms of Flash Memory had a limited (but high) number of writes/rewrites without a full-scale reformat (I have no idea about the MER memory, but it's hardly going to be the latest technology). Presumably we're seeing some slow-but-steady housekeeping at the moment.

Yep.


Who knows why those images were downloaded again...
The fact that they are part of the first 360º panorama (sol 2-3?) -- and that pano is reported as *complete* (at least on the pancam database) -- makes me wonder if this download could be part of the troubleshooting to find the culprit of that reset some days ago e.g. damaged flash memory.

Those rough-looking pieces are from the oddly-weathered piece above it.

What is really strange is the specular reflection on the two rocks to the left of the rough pieces. We've seen shiny wind-polished rocks on HH, but not here...

--Bill

Steve Squyres Update: September 23

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

--- It's been a good week at Meridiani. We've had several solid drives, and we're now effectively at the northern rim of Erebus Crater. We're currently parked on a large outcrop named South Shetland, and we're going to spend the weekend working it over with the instruments on the IDD.

After that comes the big decision... which way do we drive to attack Erebus?

The good outcrops at Erebus are on the southeastern rim (called the Vermillion Cliffs) and on the western rim (called the Mogollon Rim). The Vermillion Cliffs look easier to get to, but not as high. The Mogollon Rim exposes more rock, but looks harder to get to. There's a particularly tasty-looking promontory on the Mogollon Rim named Payson that's probably the biggest outcrop anywhere along the rim, but whether we can actually get to it or not is an open question

At the same time we're doing the IDD work on South Shetland, we're going to be taking a big Pancam panorama that hits most of Erebus at the highest resolution possible. And then, on Monday afternoon, we're going to sit down, look at the images carefully, and make a decision. We may go left, we may go right, or we may cut straight across the crater... stay tuned. ---

"cut straight across"... my first reaction was "yeah, right" but I suppose we'll look at the lie of the land first!

Hmm . . . I'm not finding the new Steve Squyres Update. Perhaps some revisions are being made?

sometimes using this version of the link helps
http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

One the negative side, these rocks are all jumbled up, just like they were at Fram and Vostok and outside of Endurance and, well, outside of every impact crater, large and small, we've driven by. Which means they're not in sequence -- they're just randomly jumbled (and highly shocked) pieces of the local evaporite layer.

On the positive side, these have to be remnants of the ejecta blanket from Erebus. And Erebus is a big crater, nearly as big as Victoria (if a lot older and more degraded). So, the closer we got to the rim, the deeper these blocks of finely layered evaporite were excavated from.

OK, guys -- these are the exposed evaporite outcrops of the Erebus rim. Not very impressive, are they...?

-the other Doug