Home, Sweet Home, Dream becomes Reality Options

[Shaka]

Hope no one minds, but I felt we have to have a new topic, right from the start, as a compendium of all the Factual Observations on this incredible structure...this Mother Ship from another world...this...(who said Burgess Shale? I laughed at that at the time. ) Who will start us off with a detailed description of what we see before us TODAY February 5, 2006 - Super Sunday.
(I'll be running from game to Exploratorium all afternoon!

[aldo12xu]

I think we're looking at strata that has been tilted through meteorite impact. The stereo images below show the bedding planes to be dipping inward at an apparent angle of at least 20 degrees, best seen in the more erosion resistant layers sticking up above the outcrop in the top right. That implies these rocks were present before the meteorite impact.

The fine laminations are not inconsistant with wind deposition and, in fact, where cross-bedding is visible, it is planar stratified, displaying none of the festoon laminations associated with flowing water. So my guess is that these are wind derived sediments. And that is also what the layering at Burns Hill is interpreted as.

I think that's about all we can say for now until we get some geochemistry data.

Left: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2364L7M1.JPG
Right: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2364R1M1.JPG

[ljk4-1]

I think we're looking at strata that has been tilted through meteorite impact.  The stereo images below show the bedding planes to be dipping inward at an apparent angle of at least 20 degrees, best seen in the more erosion resistant layers sticking up above the outcrop in the top right.  That implies these rocks were present before the meteorite impact.

I thought the area Spirit landed in was covered in basalt, indicating volcanic activity.

Of course who is to say it could not be a combination of both impacts and volcanoes?

[aldo12xu]

I thought the area Spirit landed in was covered in basalt, indicating volcanic activity. 

The Columbia Hills are older than the basaltic flows covering most of Gusev Crater.

Some of the rocks within Columbia Hills are interpreted to be clastic (eg. Peace may be a basaltic sandstone) and pyroclastic (eg. Wishtone may be a tuff) in origin. These may represent the basement rocks that were present before the Gusev impact event. With the impact event, these basement rocks were thrown up, tilted and broken up, creating brecciated rocks like Voltaire. All these units were subsequently cut by dikes, represented by basaltic rocks like Backstay and Cherry Bomb.

The plains basalts on which Spirit touched down were emplaced some time later.

Hope that helps

--Aldo--