[X] My Assistant

[CosmicRocker]

I noticed this anomalous feature in the sol 962 pancams from Cape Verde that came down today. I don't know exactly where it is in context, since it doesn't appear in any of the panoramas. A rover wheel is visible in the full sized image, so it is somewhere very near the rover's position at the time.

I have been staring at this darkly colored, circular patch with a very dark clast in its center for a quite a while, but I don't have a good explanation for what it could be. The dark circular part appears to be composed of a fine, granular sediment. I don't recall having seen anything similar to this before. It almost appears as if the dark central clast has somehow discolored the soil around it.

Who feels like speculating?

[fredk]

The "cracks" are just wheel marks, I'd say.

Again, I think that a clump of soil dropped from a wheel and then possibly run over to flatten it is the best explanation. Given the proximity to the wheel tracks, it would be a bizarre coincidence if the dark spot wasn't related to the wheels.

I've located the spot on the sol 958 pancams, before we arrived at the spot, and there's no dark spot visible:


It is visible in the 959 front hazcams, and so are some patches of dark soil in the wheels, exactly what likely produced our spot:


The spot is towards the cliff from Oppy, so on sol 959 she edged a bit towards the cliff, then back again to make the scuff and the spot.