MSL landing site: Gale Crater |
MSL landing site: Gale Crater |
Jun 23 2011, 05:13 AM
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#1
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
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Jul 22 2011, 08:53 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 656 Joined: 20-April 05 From: League City, Texas Member No.: 285 |
From the Anderson & Bell 2010 paper linked earlier:
" The similarity between the observed pattern in the upper Gale Crater mound and the cross-beds exposed at White Sands leads us to speculate that the upper mound unit may have been formed by the lithification of a large aeolian dune field. " To me, establishing that this is the case would lead to a redirection of the mission away from the mound and to the crater floor and rim -- plenty of neat things to explore there. Actually, the more I read the more I'd like to see the mound as pretty scenery in the distance while exploring things like elevated and sinuous channels and of course phyllosliicates. "Scott et al. (1978), Greeley and Guest (1987), Scott and Chapman (1995), Malin and Edgett (2000) and Thomson et al. (2008) have suggested or discussed an aeolian origin for the material of the Gale mound. We observe textures on the upper mound unit that could be large-scale (hundreds of meters) crossbeds (Figure 30), similar to bedforms observed at White Sands National Monument on Earth (Figure 32). We interpret the observed textures as evidence that the upper mound has an aeolian origin. On Earth, crossbeds are often significantly smaller than those observed on the upper mound, so that the lack of crossbeds in HiRISE observations of the lower mound does not exclude an aeolian origin for these units. Although no crossbeds are observed in the lower mound units, the ridged morphology of portions of the mound-skirting unit and the dark-toned layered yardang unit may represent lithified aeolian bedforms. " They go on to discuss the possibility of there having been a crater lake and many features resulting from lacustrine processes, which does not conflict with an aeolian origin of the mound, and mention that there were likely many process involved in creating the features present today. Overall a neat paper. |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 13th June 2024 - 08:46 AM |
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