Home, Sweet Home, Dream becomes Reality Options

[RNeuhaus]

I look forward in hearing from JPL's activity plan around HP. Will Spirit circle around it before climbing into HP. I think that the most important step at HP is to circle around it due two strong reasons:

1) A scientific method that starts from outside into inside. This method help to understand better the nature of HP first by visting the outside that might influence it.

2) Now it is spring, there is more light now than tomorrow, so Spirit must take the advantage of it in the early to spend more solar energy to circle around HP before climbing into HP.

3) You name it if you have a good guess about the next Spirit move !!!

Rodolfo

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

They need to put the MI on the rock in the top left of this image

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2363R1M1.HTML

[Bill Harris]

The shards of shattered rock need not indicate extremely violent event(s). They look just like the kind of fragments one finds...

The fragments look like the rock was formed by cyclic deposition events, and have a shattered appearance because of extreme diurnal thermal cycling. I'm interested in seeing the "basement' unit below this layered unit. I imagine that an impact ought to show shattercones (or other signs).

This looks like a weathered outcrop.


--Bill

[RNeuhaus]

They need to put the MI on the rock in the top left of this image   

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2363R1M1.HTML

Do MI on the laminated fallen rock? It looks it was detached from the rim of HP and later it was eroded by the aeolian process, does it not?

Rodolfo

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Yep...thats the one. Also Spirit would be in a great spot for some closeup pancams of the rest of the layered outcrop.

[Shaka]

Yep...thats the one.  Also Spirit would be in a great spot for some closeup pancams of the rest of the layered outcrop.

Abso-freakin'-lutely! So where are today's photos at Exploratorium? Don't they know we're dyin' out here waiting for some close-ups? I've been at this keyboard so long I see 164 keys! What's going on? We're hooked now; they can't cut us off cold turkey!
(I don't know what this emoticon means, but it's indicative of my mental state.)

[ddeerrff]

They need to put the MI on the rock in the top left of this image   

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2363R1M1.HTML

You mean the piece of broken pottery?

[ilbasso]

That "laminated fallen rock" almost looks like a shard of pottery in an archaeological dig.

[Shaka]

The fragments look like the rock was formed by cyclic deposition events, and have a shattered appearance because of extreme diurnal thermal cycling.  I'm interested in seeing the "basement' unit below this layered unit. I imagine that an impact ought to show shattercones (or other signs).

This looks like a weathered outcrop.
--Bill

Yes, definitely. I don't see it on this side. I think we must get a look at the west side.

[Shaka]

You mean the piece of broken pottery?

No, he means the old porcelein commode.
...gasp....getting delirious...must rest soon...rest...yeeeesss

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Hi all,

there was recently another thread Home Plate Speculations, Get it in now, before we know the truth! with a friendly competition about trying to understand Homeplate before we actually see and analyse it.

It seems that I was a bit close to what we see: (predicting a three-layered system)

The latest scenario I suggest, after closest view of sol 742:
Sometimes between the formation of Gussev and the final filling by mudflow, there was a lake (temporary, or permanent). The surface of this lake was about the level of Homeplate, or a little above, so that Husband hills were not covered. Its open surface lasted only some days, and after the surface frozen, and eventually all the water froze to the core in some months or years.

This water was charged with a variety of salts, and these salts were deposited, but very unevenly, from the presence of ice, after one or several of the following processes:

-waves projected water on mounds, where it evaporated very quickly, lefting the salts on priviledged patches. (This is sometimes visible on earth)
-there were faults in the ice cover, allowing strong evaporation of water in some very restricted places.
-There was a continuous ice cover, see the lake froze into its whole depth. But salts were contentred in tiny patches of very salty brines, which can exist at very low temperatures (-50°C for calcium chloride). When ice sublimated, it left the solid salt patches to end drying. Homeplate could be one of these patches.  Other were observed all around.

So if this model is true, it predicts that Homeplate and similar smaller patches are just salts. Eventually we may find, from top to bottom:

-basaltic blocks and sands, projected here by more recent impacts
-most soluble salts, such as sodium and calcium chlorides
-less soluble salts, such as jarosite and sulphates
-eventually an iron oxyd layer somewhere in between
-at bottom a sandstone of basaltic sand cemented with sulphates or carbonates (eventually limestone). This layer would be the dark rocky outcrop which seems to encircle Homeplate.
-a "discordance" and under ordinary soil (same as elsewhere around).

...

and that Homeplate would be the same thing than a much larger similar structure, that of Pollack crater

[Bill Harris]

Richard--

I'm witholding judgement until we know more about the lithologies...

--Bill

[Burmese]

Does this image show Bonneville in the upper left?

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...00P1785L0M1.JPG

If so, it is a very nice view of the route between Bonneville and West Spur.

[SigurRosFan]

I mean no, Bonneville is rather behind the rocky hill in the upper right. The crater (upper left) is exactly to the west.

[ElkGroveDan]

although I like the title of this one better.

Ditto.