There you go, folks. Good work, let's take this lemon of a wheel and make lemonade of it. It's going to be a pain to drag it along, but as several have noted, it will be an interesting running experiment, and as Rodolfo points out, the birds often follow our harvesting machines and earth-movers. We really don't seem to have much of a choice at this point, so let's make the most of it.

It looks as if it will be pretty useful for digging up the buried salt deposits. At first I was thinking the recent white patches were just places where Spirit scraped the soil away from the light-colored rock we have been driving over for several sols, but this turn really looks like the previous occurances of the fluffy sulfates.

Cosmic Rocker must be in software design: A stuck wheel is a "feature", no extra charge. So what is the name for this useful tool? The Trenchifacator? The Aeolian Deposit Destratifier?

I wonder if we may also get luck in turning over many more pebbles and rocks to maybe see less weathered surfaces?

Another benefit will be the tracks will be much easier viewed from orbit: so over the years as they fade might give some useful clues to dust-movement rates across mars?

The "Trenchifacator"...I like that. The rovers' tracks and trenches have to be great for Mars soil science. I'd like to see a route map to where Spirit needs to go to stay safe and have a daily progress chart.

I'm not nearly skilled or knowledgeable enough to put together the route maps that other posters have put up (I'm just a very interested layman who wanted to get into space science past college but couldn't hack calculus). But I could try....I have MMB and Paint Shop Pro and some basic knowledge.

Edit: D'OH! I missed the pinned Spirit route map. I'm checking it out now.

THE TRENCHINATOR - look for the new Q'n'A ( that's a full half hour long ) - we talk about trenchinating

Faulty wheel? it's a pre-breaking devise for safety. Eat your heart out Volvo.
Roy F

Oh great..the exploratorium is dead again.

No it's not - Odyssey safe moded yesterday - expect a few days of blackout.

Can't complain, she's a damn good messenger - last blackout was back before purgatory

Doug

I was wondering why things were so quiet all of sudden. Thanks for filling us in.

Weren't they using Odyssey to uplink commands to Spirit because of a communicatinos conflict with MRO? How are they going to handle communicating sith Spirit whle Odyssey is in safe mode?

The rovers will look after themselves for days on end - but I'm sure they'll be able to do some sort of uplink if needs be.

Doug

There are a lot of things we don't/can't understand because of the time frames and environments involved.

Two years ago I started an oddball experiment creating my own Burns Formation. I got sandstone with the nastiest framboidal pyrite and let it oxidize to make a quantity of iron-plus_other_metals sulfates. Added this brew to a saturated solution of magnesium sulfate. Let it evaporate to dryness and continue to "dehydrate" over time. The slow "dehydration" from the "hydrated" mass of salt crystals has been interesting watching the 'fairy castle' structures grow. Looks rather like the "popcorn" masses we've seen lately.

Image attached.

I may redissolve the whole mass/mess and add a quantity of fine silica sand (as a matrix), no clays allowed.

--Bill

Clearly biogenic. Oh, sorry - wrong Martian blog.

Andy

Wow, Bill, that's really cool. Yes, it definitely looks like the strawberry textured nodules. Please keep the experiment going. I wonder what would take to get actual concretions to form?

After the water evaporated from the brew and it became a block of sulfate crystals, I left it for several months in a sunny window sill with a loose-fitting cover to keep dust and other "aeolian" deposition out. The textured features seen here are light, fluffy microcrystalline structures thaty have grown from the saturated sulfate salt mass. The thickness is between 5 and 35mm. I really should have been photographing their development all along, they were a suprise to me. I have noted that these sulfate salts have been pulling moisture from the air for their reaction. I expected this-- the pyritic sandstones react in containers in my lab/office using only humidity from the air. This may be an odd element of the Martian hydrologic cycle (as noted in the current Geology, and as noted here).

Instead of redissolving this mass and starting over I'll let it continue and do another vat with fresh sulfates and fine silica sand. I have lots of framboidal pyrite wanting to react to make the iron sulfate brew. I may try "seeding" the saturated sand mass with hematite, pyrite, etc.

--Bill

Bill,
Perhaps you could grind up some basalt and use it instead of a silica (quartz?) sand. Or would that be adding too much iron to the mixture?