The Top of Vera Rubin Ridge Part 2, Site 67-73, sol 1944-2297, 24 Jan 2018-22 Jan 2019 Options

[Ant103]

Hi

Nice to get some new pictures.

Sol 2210 Navcam panoramic, with rover body. Looks a bit dusty after the "Great Storm 2018".

[PaulH51]

Nice work Damia

The robotic arm pulls away the APXS during sol 2210, I think it was placed on the surface before the memory issue, so it's been there a while....


It also looks like there may have been a DD and cloud imaging campaign on 2211, but I can find a mission update, so it's only a guess.

[PaulH51]

Good to see some of the science cameras back in action

Here's an animated GIF of the unsuccessful drill attempt at Inverness. I have used just two frames, one from sol 2171 and the other from 2211. We can observe that many the fines and drill cuttings have been removed by the wind, there are also movement of some very small pebbles. I reduced the animation width to 1024 px to ease loading time. I roughly aligned the frames by adding margins.




R-MastCam raw frames: 2171 & 2211

[Sean]

Here is a link to an animated gif of lens corrected rear left hazcam from sols 2210&2209. ( swapped sols to provide a contiguous sequence )

[jccwrt]

Good to see some of the science cameras back in action

Here's an animated GIF of the unsuccessful drill attempt at Inverness. I have used just two frames, one from sol 2171 and the other from 2211. We can observe that many the fines and drill cuttings have been removed by the wind, there are also movement of some very small pebbles. I reduced the animation width to 1024 px to ease loading time. I roughly aligned the frames by adding margins.




R-MastCam raw frames: 2171 & 2211

Hmm, I see the color of the rocks that were abraided have faded back to the color of the surrounding outcrop. I wonder how much of that is atmospheric dust deposition vs. a surface oxidation of the rock after being exposed to the atmosphere. I think if it were a flat surface I would just say 'airfall' and be done with it, but it seems like that little pebble sticking up in the DRT(?) scour changed uniformly too.

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L A view on Sol 2214.

Jan van Driel

[Phil Stooke]

Two panoramas from the same spot, but not exactly the same - here are circular versions of Damia's and Jan's panoramas. You can see the arm moved, and Damia's view covers the rover deck.

Phil

Left: Damia, sol 2210: Right: Jan, sol 2214:

[Phil Stooke]

Justin: "------vs. a surface oxidation of the rock after being exposed to the atmosphere"


Would the surface oxidize in 40 sols in a thin dry CO2 atmosphere?

Phil

[jccwrt]

It could be possible. I had an opportunity to talk to Steven Chemtob a few weeks ago about his work in oxidative processes in smectite. He suggested that UV photooxidation might contribute to the oxidized surface rinds we've seen through Gale Crater. I had asked him whether that occurred at an observable rate, and he suggested it was a relatively slow process for bulk materials but might form extremely thin rinds on short time scales. We ended up talking about trying an experiment late in the mission, once Curiosity was permanently parked. The idea was that we'd scratch the surface with the DRT, and then occasionally check for oxidation state changes with passive ChemCam spectra.

I doubt 40 days is enough time to form a photooxidation rind (we were talking a year or two), but seeing the uniform color changes in that blink comparison brought the conversation back to mind. It could be a good opportunity to check!

[Phil Stooke]

Very interesting. Thanks!

Phil

[PaulH51]

Looking south, sol 2214 L-MastCam - Drive direction?

[PaulH51]

Crystals or Inclusions seen in this RMI of 'Grange' on sol 2216 (October 31, 2018), shown here with a crop from the recent R-MastCam of Inverness to provide scale (1.6 cm hole diameter)

[HSchirmer]

It could be possible. I had an opportunity to talk to Steven Chemtob a few weeks ago about his work in oxidative processes in smectite. He suggested that UV photooxidation might contribute to the oxidized surface rinds we've seen through Gale Crater. I had asked him whether that occurred at an observable rate, and he suggested it was a relatively slow process for bulk materials but might form extremely thin rinds on short timescales. We ended up talking about trying an experiment late in the mission, once Curiosity was permanently parked. The idea was that we'd scratch the surface with the DRT, and then occasionally check for oxidation state changes with passive ChemCam spectra.

I doubt 40 days is enough time to form a photooxidation rind (we were talking a year or two), but seeing the uniform color changes in that blink comparison brought the conversation back to mind. It could be a good opportunity to check!

Well, a recent paper suggests that dust storms should be incredibly good at making highly-oxidizing perchlorates, so we might expect a short-term oxidation event, IF the recent global dust storm manufactured as much perchlorate as some models suggest...

"strong electric fields, such as those created by static electricity in global dust storms, could break down gases in the Martian atmosphere and thus drive perchlorate-generating reactions."

The team estimates rates of perchlorate formation inside martian dust storms could be as much as 10 million times higher than those driven by sunlight

[Gerald]

Have any electric discharge events been recorded unambiguosly on Mars in the meanwhile? The basis of according data has been rather subtle the last time I looked for it, e.g. here.
Such recordings would be required for the sketched perchlorate formation path to be fairly convincing.
I thought, that further remote measurements have been considered. But I don't know about any recent results.

[HSchirmer]

Have any electric discharge events been recorded unambiguosly on Mars in the meanwhile? The basis of according data has been rather subtle the last time I looked for it, e.g. here.
Such recordings would be required for the sketched perchlorate formation path to be fairly convincing.
I thought, that further remote measurements have been considered. But I don't know about any recent results.

Cite is
Forming perchlorates on Mars through plasma chemistry during dust events
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic...5065?via%3Dihub