[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

Wow, Spirit does look really dusty in this one;
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_..._1_True_RAD.jpg

Oh... hey... there is orange soil here!

Oh, all right -- on Mars, there is orange soil everywhere. But some of the overturned dirt in this particularly interesting set of tracks is really orange-red in these true-color images. Moreso than the regular reddish ground soil.

-the other Doug

[Bob Shaw]

Oh... hey... there is orange soil here!

Oh, all right -- on Mars, there is orange soil everywhere.  But some of the overturned dirt in this particularly interesting set of tracks is really orange-red in these true-color images.  Moreso than the regular reddish ground soil.

-the other Doug

other Doug:

They shoulda called it 'Shorty'!

Bob Shaw

[slinted]

This JPL photojournal writeup confirms findings of iron sulfates in Arad, much like Paso Robles.

[CosmicRocker]

Yeah, Dan. I also noticed that they posted the same infomation at the MER site. http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20060120a.html

"These images from Spirit's panoramic camera (Pancam) show some of the most colorful deposits yet photographed on the surface of Mars."

I was happy to see them verify that this site was, as I previously suggested in post #32, "so colorful." I still like the false-colored versions better, though. I am also happy to learn that this is essentially another Paso Robles. We didn't need another Martian Mystery.

Doug^2: I agree. There is Orange, and then, there is Orange.


On a completely different and OT note, has anyone else posted a link to the Steve Squyres' Podcasts elsewhere in the forum? I stumbled upon them earlier today.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/podcast/ They are seriously worth listening to. ...the latest news, as far as I know...amazing stuff...

Am I the last person here to discover this?

[Bill Harris]

No, next to the last person. It's buried in Multimedia/Podcasts, and there is nothing to suggest that there are text transcripts. Although MP3 is doable, some of us find 8mB downloads a bit heavy.

--Bill

[sattrackpro]

...and there is nothing to suggest that there are text transcripts.

But there are transcript links on the page cited...

Here links... Part 1 and Part 2

Most interesting - particularly about water being mostly laced with sulfuric acid...

[stevo]

This comment also

"Well, with Opportunity, we'd like to see even deeper into the crust, we'd like to find an even bigger hole to climb down into, or we'd like to find a place where we can climb up into higher layers. Basically, what we've got now is we've got about 20 to 25 feet of this stack of rocks that we have examined in detail. I'd like to double that, triple that, quadruple that. And in order to do that, you have to go other places."

Hmmm. Opportunity, bigger hole ...

[Bill Harris]

I have the text transcripts saved. What I meant was in the Podcast link on the Multimedia page there is nothing to suggest that there is nothing to suggest a transcript in the Podcast link. Unless you're interested in Podcasts you'll not go down 2-3 layers.

--Bill

[slinted]

The latest update from Steve Squyres revealed some of what Spirit found at Arad:

At Gusev, Arad turned out to be worth the stop.  It's extraordinarily high in ferric sulfate salts, and it now holds the record for the saltiest place ever discovered on Mars. Interestingly, though, it doesn't seem to have the phosphates that Paso Robles did. We're still pondering on this one.

Breaking the 'saltiest soil' record couldn't have been easy, the recent JGR APXS paper identified Paso Robles as being 49% by weight ferric sulfates.

It would seem that the phosphates are going to pose a much bigger challenge to our understanding. Paso Robles had more sulfates and more P than any other place yet sampled by Spirit. It didn't seem like it would be too far of a stretch to think that both components had been transported together. But if Arad shows only the sulfates, and none of the phosphates, then the theories of transport get a whole lot more complicated.

Also still lingering is the issue of concentration. Why are these patches so specially localized? Why haven't these areas been mixed in? Spirit has now seen two very dense patches of salt that don't appear to have been stirred into the surrounding soil.

[Bill Harris]

Also still lingering is the issue of concentration. Why are these patches so specially localized?

Applying a terrestrial analog: mineralized ground water, traveling along a bedding plane or perched aquifer, hits the outcrop, the water evaporates along the outcrop leaving a high concentration of Fe+ and SO4- and whatever other anions/cations were dissolved.

Either that, or think Hydrothermal.

See the "approach to the crest of Mitcheltree Ridge" image in the "Speculations" thread.

--Bill

[CosmicRocker]

As Bill said, such things can easily be localized by a number of conditions, but I'll ask again; how do we really know they are "localized?" We've only seen them in some localized areas, but that may only be because the wheels were forced to dig into a few localized areas.

The partitioning of phosphorous does seem to be a localized phenomenon, but I think it might be explained by selective leaching of elements from a very heterogenous pile of rock, emplaced by impacts and volcanic events on the young planet.

I think that planetology has much to learn about the early history of planetary formation from missions like this. Most, if not all, of the rocks from this period, no longer exist on our planet.