Sliding into 'Home Plate North', Heading for Spirit's 2008 Winter Retreat Options

[Del Palmer]

Gene Cernan said Moondust smelled like burnt gunpowder. Jim Garvin has said that Mars would have a similar odor to volcanic areas on Earth (sulfur-rich).

[dot.dk]

Can someone refresh my memory on how long we will likely be at the winter haven?

As it is now we are at early SH autum. Just passed the equinox actually according to Mars 24.
If we need to stay here from Christmas onwards, would that mean we will stay to the next spring equinox?? That's a mighty long time

Can always hope for some cleaning.

[climber]

I guess we'll be there for some 8 months... as long as last winter and probably more life threatening

[nprev]

Great pic, Stu!!!

Did anybody else notice that quite cubical rock in the lower right section? Seems to be sitting on a nice flat plate-like rock as well. Almost have to wonder if it's a dust-encrusted crystal of some sort (pyrite?)

Re smell of Mars: The soil mix I made based on Viking results for a science fair project way back in the Pleistocene (using sulfates for the major minerals) did have a very distinct sulfurous odor. Unlike the Moon, I think that future Martian farming will have to be entirely hydroponic...even if plants would grow in that stuff, I'm sure they'd taste pretty nasty.

[Aussie]

Gene Cernan said Moondust smelled like burnt gunpowder. Jim Garvin has said that Mars would have a similar odor to volcanic areas on Earth (sulfur-rich).

Back in the lab on Earth the dust collected by Apollo Missions had no discernable smell. Must have been a short term reaction (nice oxygen rich and damp environment in the capsule). Nprev - did you try to grow anything in your science project mix? The Martian dirt would make Acid Sulphate Soils seem positively alkaline.

[hendric]

Yup - there's raised wiring in those places, so dust will accumulate.

Doug

I think it's the other way around, the raised wiring is causing turbulence, making the dust not "stick" to those areas. At least, that's the way it looks to me.

[alan]

a bunch of press release images posted by JPL including an image of the panels, dark patches next to the wires included.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/s.../20071210a.html

[dvandorn]

Back in the lab on Earth the dust collected by Apollo Missions had no discernable smell. Must have been a short term reaction (nice oxygen rich and damp environment in the capsule).

Moon dust smelled like burned gunpowder to the astronauts, so the story goes, because the dust had sharp rock facets that had never been exposed to enough gas to interact with the facet surfaces. That made the surfaces of the dust particles slightly more chemically reactive than they would become once they had been immersed in gases for a bit. (Especially oxygen.) Gunpowder is also more chemically reactive than most other terrestrial substances (certainly more than dirt), and so our sense of smell perceives the two substances similarly. As soon as Moon dust is kept in an atmosphere for a while, it loses its odor.

Now, as for Mars... I have been thinking for some time that Mars dust might actually have a rather nauseating aroma. Add the obvious sulphuric element to the peroxides that are postulated to make up at least some of the soils, and you get something that would stink and burn your nasal passages, all at once. It would be a hell of a note if we lost the first humans on Mars because they couldn't keep food down...

-the other Doug

[imipak]

Interesting story on the BBC concerning discoveries in "churned up soil" (is that Tyrone they're talking about?)

The researchers have now concluded that the bright material must have been produced in one of two ways. One hypothesis is that Spirit is seeing hot-spring deposits produced when water dissolves silica at one location and then dumps it in another. The classic is example is a geyser.

The other idea being pursued by the rover team is that they have stumbled across a fumarole, where acidic steam rises through cracks in rocks and strips them of all of their mineral components, apart from silica.

(single sentence BBC paragraphs compressed.)

[djellison]

the raised wiring is causing turbulence, making the dust not "stick" to those areas.

You know something, comparing to the area around the based of the PCMA etc - I think you're right.

The only issue there though, is that the wires right along the first cell to the right of the calib target should be white if clean, and where the deck is brown - they're whitey brown - where the deck is black ( suggestive of clean by this thinking ) the wires are black.

Doug

[nprev]

Nprev - did you try to grow anything in your science project mix?

Yeah...a couple of unfortunate cacti & succulents. Had a nice red rock with lichen in there as well. I filled the container with CO2 & pumped it down to something less than 50 mb (as best as I could tell with my school's equipment); did not simulate the temp swings, did not simulate the UV flux. Despite the fact that this made the environment Miami Beach compared to the real Mars, the plants croaked pretty fast...around two weeks, and they became dryed-up shriveled things. Saw no ill effects on the lichen, though.

[JRehling]

[churned up terrain]

For good or bad, the SF daily paper (the AGU is meeting in San Francisco) is fronting this story in a way reminiscent of the 1996 story about microbes in martian meteorites: "The Biggest Mars Find Yet", with a link to a story similar to the BBC article but more optimistic about astrobiological ramifications:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...1/MN4OTRSU8.DTL

This sentence (from the Chronicle Science Editor?) strikes a tone that I didn't find in Squyres's comments or the BBC article: "This may turn out to be the best evidence yet that living organisms could once have existed on Mars and left their fossilized environments of silica and titanium traces as testimony."

That sentence alone seems to imply that the silica and titanium are actually caused by organisms, whereas in reading Squyers's comments themselves, I infer that silica and titanium HAPPEN to be found in environments on Earth with microorganisms (like just about every place on Earth), but not linking the two.

Anyway, if the Columbia Hills are lots of piled up impact debris sitting in a crater, it's interesting if anything geyserlike reached up through them at all. As for astrobiology, I don't see any connections. Earth is covered with biota, and some have adapted themselves to geysers. That hardly means that geysers would be a place where life could arise.

[hendric]

The only issue there though, is that the wires right along the first cell to the right of the calib target should be white if clean, and where the deck is brown - they're whitey brown - where the deck is black ( suggestive of clean by this thinking ) the wires are black.

Doug

Well, the wires and the deck are made of different materials.
Maybe the wires are covered in dust because, being insulators, they can hold a static charge better and so attract dirt like the front of an old CRT.
Maybe some of the wires are carrying more current than others, building a stronger magnetic field and attracting more iron dust?
Or maybe 3 years on the harsh Martian environment is causing the insulation to turn?

[ElkGroveDan]

Also from the S.F. Chronicle story:

The undamaged Opportunity, which has traveled about seven miles since it landed, is now well down inside the large crater named Victoria, where its instruments are busy analyzing three layers of white rock that its Earth-bound science controllers have nicknamed the "bathtub ring." Those layers, hundreds of yards thick, are rich in sulfates that also may mark ancient wet conditions on the planet, Squyres said

[alan]

I was updating my Spirit's route map to include the so called "WH3 - Winter Haven #3" on the map, and seaching for it on older images I found that Alan already posted some ones here on this same thread. I looked for the navcams taken during sols 766 and 767, which are the closest ones to the planned WH3, and stitched this mosaic below.
[attachment=12746:pano_nav...ol766_nr.jpg]
Now, each time I look to this picture I ask myself: "where will Spirit be parked?"
Correct me if I´m wrong but I see this place as another sand trap.

Looking at it from this angle it does look hazardous, the drifts appear to extend onto a relatively flat step.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...9DP1926R0M1.JPG
this slope looks nice though
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...9DP1926R0M1.JPG