The western route, 5th leg after stop at Absecon / Reeds Bay Options

[Tesheiner]

Time for a new thread.
After moving southwards for ages, the "detour" by the western path has started with a 60+ meters drive on sol 1942.


There are no images yet --they should be available on the next update-- so this image was calculated solely based on the rover's mobility info. I'll update the route map later.

[CryptoEngineer]

I'm trying to picture how such a pedestal could form.
(Warning - non-geologist talking here)

A pedestal exists because the capping object modifies things in a way that slows down erosion of the material underneath it. Most typically, on Earth, it protects against rain. That's not happening here.

But: If the entire surface is deflating due to aeolian erosion, you could still get a pedestal: if the iron meteor is much more resistant to erosion than the rock surface it is laying on, it protects the surface it is laying on from erosion from above. That protected rock can only be eroded from the side, as the deflation of the surrounding surface drops below the level the meteor is resting on. As the erosion works inwards, it leaves the meteor perched on the pedestal, until it becomes too thin, or the material under the meteor's center of gravity erodes, at which point it topples off and the process starts over.

Have I got it right?

It seems to me that if we really aren't sure if this is a pedestal or not, there's an easy way to find out: Spirit has been using its MI to get some notion as to what's going on underneath it. Oppy could use it to get a worms-eye view of the base of BI, and see if there is daylight around the edges of BI.

CE