Spirit Finds Sulfates Options

[dot.dk]

In this Space.com article Steve Squyres explains how the soil Spirit has churned up lately contains a large amount of sulfates.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/mars_meteor_050219.html

That's interesting

[slinted]

I've been really interested in this material, and am glad to hear that this little mystery has been solved...epsom salts. There was some IDD work on this material back around Sol 165, but they never mentioned what they found. Score another water-marker for Spirit!

Here's some color shots of this material when it has been exposed by the wheels (either as dusty material apparantly uncovered by the wheels, or as small pebbles that have been crushed to dust under the wheels):

Sol 400, regolith disturbed by spun wheels :

Sol 351, wheel tracks :

Sol 167, wheel tracks :

Sol 165, wheel tracks :


It wasn't as visually striking back on sol 140 when they did a trench, but magnesium sulfate was identified as a major constituant back then as well :
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20040608a.html

[Nix]

Great!! This stuff is very interesting. Here it is on sol 180.

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[Nix]

This is a close up of the area just to the left of the previous image.

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[erwan]

NIX: catched in minute! Thanks!

[Nix]

L257 corrected image of tracks and disturbed soil. I hope we're going to see more of this material !

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[slinted]

Here's a couple color images of the disturbed soil target, Paso Robles I believe, under Spirit's instruments at the moment.

It shows similar bright features as seen in the sulfate rich soil targets.

Sol 424:

Sol 426:

[alan]

My attempt at combining more than three filter to make a color image: L2L3L4 for red, L5 for green and L6L7 for blue using ImageJ. The results look odd but bring out the differences in the bright material.


raw images courtesy of JPL

[alan]

Something that is bugging me. Why did the emblem come out looking red when I added the L2 and L3?

[slinted]

Take a look at the L2 image.. In this filter, the meatball is brightness clipped to the highest possible value. Adding L2 into the red mix with the same weight as L3 and L4 probably overemphasized that feature.

[wyogold]

Boy that looks like good stuff.

[djellison]

Take a look at the L2 image.. In this filter, the meatball is brightness clipped to the highest possible value. Adding L2 into the red mix with the same weight as L3 and L4 probably overemphasized that feature.

Yup - same reason the blue insulation foam is pink when you do L256. L23456 is just a toned down version of that really.

doug

[slinted]

Here's a 4 frame mosaic of the trench at Paso Robles2. From the sounds of the the latest JPL update, Spirit is now moving on from this site.

Sol 424 - 431 at Paso Robles2, L234567

[Simon]

that's a great image. I've seen those frames - did not occur to me that they were a set. I'll make a set of our own tonight and see what sort of desktops can be pulled out with no black edges.

the sulfate find has been a beauty in color. it seems that the angle of lighting makes for very rich colors. it's interesting how much the results vary across between viewing angles and times of day.

simon

[slinted]

We haven't seen, or heard, much about the salty soil for almost 200 sols, but it seems that Spirit may be seeing this material again, up on the peak of Husband Hill.

After driving away from the southern ledge, and heading northeast towards the true peak, Spirit took this image (Sol 613, L256) of her wheel tracks showing bright dusty material very reminiscent of the soil around Paso Robles. There are several other images from the Sol 613 panorama which show this, but a couple are still missing segments. I'll post up a mosaic of just the drive tracks once all these images are downlinked in full.

On Sol 625, very fortuitously, the bright material was caught in the background of a calibration target image series.

Also, more recently, on Sol 628, Spirit examined some fresh wheel tracks leading up to the true summit, showing larger area of the bright material:



It doesn't look like Spirit saw any in the "Cliffhanger" drift trench, back around sol 610, at least not in the crushed/powdery form, although there are some significantly brighter pebbles visible in that image. I'll be very interested to hear what materials they found in the IDD work done on that drift.