Journey to Mt Sharp - Part 5A: Pahrump Hills, Sites 42-45, Sol 753-923, Sep 18, 2014-March 12, 2015 Options

[vikingmars]

Sol 752 Mastcam pan :
Note that it will my last pan before a long time. Many reasons… I feel discourage to process MER and MSL pictures. I have the impression that we are at an industrial time of imagery processing. Scripts, automated process, more powerful computers than mine. You have to understand that most of my production is completely manual, with mouse pointings, drag&drops, etc. It's time consuming. Maybe it's a little bit selfish, I know, but I can't even compete.
I will continue to check this place, and Twitter And maybe propose one Postcard, I don't know.
See you all

Dear Ant 103,
I understand exactly what you mean : I work also with a lot of manual corrections...
Your images are really stunning and welcome among the world of space artists !
Thanks so much for all the work you've done.
Herebelow an image processing and colorization coming from the Spirit rover...
You remember ? The mission from which you started working so well on Mars images !
We will miss you !

[serpens]

There is a huge difference between the product of an artist and that of a technician Damia, which is why my desktops invariably originate with you.

Garder la foi Damia.

[neo56]

Pahrump Hills was imaged on sol 753 with MC34:

And with MC100:

[Guest_Actionman_*]

Looks very flat

[Floyd]

That's why its called hills

[Guest_Actionman_*]

One could call it a gulch, except it's all filled in

[brellis]

The pics in Post #18 show (what looks to me like) a flagstone patio complete with the equivalent of concrete filler, with tiny pebbles concentrated in these narrow areas. Question: Were the pebbles transported to the flagstone area by wind, and simply stick better in the narrow strips, or do they result from a more ancient and/or complex process? Thanks!

As a child, I helped my dad lay out a flagstone patio in our backyard. Feels like a billion years ago!

[ap0s]

Post #18 Question: Were the pebbles transported to the flagstone area by wind, and simply stick better in the narrow strips, or do they result from a more ancient and/or complex process?

Perhaps the pebbles were caught up in the small dunes we see and were left behind in the cracks as the dunes traveled?

[Eutectic]

The pics in Post #18 show (what looks to me like) a flagstone patio complete with the equivalent of concrete filler, with tiny pebbles concentrated in these narrow areas. Question: Were the pebbles transported to the flagstone area by wind, and simply stick better in the narrow strips, or do they result from a more ancient and/or complex process? Thanks!

As a first guess, I'd go with your first explanation, or a variant: the pebbles were in the cracks before the present surface was exposed. The outcrop is remarkably clean, suggesting wind erosion is quite effective here. There are some "fins" along cracks in the upper right of the MC100 image, similar to ones seen at Meridiani, and presumably formed of more resistant vein-filling material, but the fins don't look volumetrically significant. Looking at the cross-cutting relationships of the cracks, they seem to have formed in more than one episode, and it's possible that pebbles and finer particles filled them before the present surface was eroded, or, as you suggest, they may simply have been caught in the cracks as wind blew them across the smoother surface.

[Eutectic]

Sol 752 Mastcam pan :
Note that it will my last pan before a long time. Many reasons…

Thank you for the many superior panoramas you have made. The extra care you have taken has made your images superior to the mechanically-made ones; your blending method hides the seams and vignetting better than any automated compositing I've seen. Just wanted you to know that many of us on this forum appreciate your work even if we haven't always said so. May you enjoy the time away from the panorama-making.

[anticitizen2]

Brush and mini-drill before/after! Sol 756 Hazcam

edit: here is the Navcam view

[anticitizen2]

MAHLI images are down:

Brushing before/after - notice some erosion of the rock, e.g. this raised bit to the top right

Mini-drilling before/after and from closer

[MahFL]

The slab cracked during the drilling. Likely they will have to find another thicker slab.

[Gerald]

This raw MAHLI image shows the clear color contrast between surface regolith and drill tailings.

Tailings look like those of a fine sandstone. Grain size at first glance about 200 micrometers.
The grayish color should indicate non-fully oxidized material, few hematite at most.

Edit:
Concentrical scratches by the brushing hint towards a soft surface. The crack seems to have been caused by the drilling, so the rock should be weakly cemented in its interior, too.
Accumulation of regolith during the drilling, and the appearence of the rock like a weakly cemented fine sandstone reminds me strongly at Bonanza King.

[jmknapp]

Just got an RSS notification that there was a new USGS blog entry, but don't see it in the blog itself. Anyway, here is the text from the RSS feed:

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0700 Curiosity has had a busy weekend! We arrived at the location called Pahrump Hills, which has a nice flat expanse of bedrock for us to drill and get our first taste of Mt. Sharp rocks. On Sol 755 we took pictures of the outcrop with MAHLI, brushed it with the Dust Removal Tool (DRT), and measured its composition with APXS. Then, on Sol 756 we did a “mini-drill” to test the stability of the rock before doing a full drill. We used Sol 757 to recharge after all of the arm activity of the previous sols.
In the sol 758 plan today, we have a lot going on. ChemCam will be zapping the targets Mammoth and Morrison, and Mastcam will take images of those targets, plus the tailings from the mini-drill. Then we will use MAHLI to take pictures of Mammoth and Moenkopi, we will use the DRT to brush off Moenkopi, and then do some more MAHLI imaging afterward. Finally, APXS will measure the composition of the targets Moenkopi and Mammoth.