[X] My Assistant

[vikingmars]

It looks semi-transparent. You can see the pebble behind it.

For sure, MAHLI could help...

[fredk]

For sure it could, but the press release said "the rover team decided to refrain from using the rover's robotic arm", presumably until they identify the piece and determine that it won't harm the arm to move it.

MC100 won't match the resolution of chemcam, but will give some colour information.

Has anyone identified earlier images of that patch of ground, with any camera?

[paraisosdelsiste...]

I've tried to make a quick match of Sol 60/61 pics of the same zone. Due to the resolution of NavCams only a little dark patch is visible, but I don't know if it's due to a shadow of a little rock or the grey strip seen on MastCam pics. Take a look by yourself:



Mod: EVERYONE! Read again rule 3.5: Avoid excessive quoting. If your reply will immediately follow the post you're replying to, do not quote it at all. If your reply refers to a post farther up in the thread, quote only that text that is relevant to your reply. Avoid quoting images.

[Doc]

From your animation parais. there doesn't seem to be any difference. I would agree that the dark feature in the navcam images is in fact 'Little shiny' as dvandorn called it.

Mod: See above.

Whoops! Sorry there.

[pechisbeque]

Could it be a scrapping from the corner of the scoop?
Maybe the scoop hit some rock beneath the sand that we can't see now.
In the scoop images it kind of looks like of the corners is slightly scratched.

[Stu]

Personally I'm amazed we haven't seen more scraps of crud. We all saw the plume that went up when the descent stage hit the ground...and the heatshield got with a whack, too... those impacts could have sent a lot of light debris into the air, which had to come down somewhere, right? And we know Gale is a gusty place. Add those things together, and it's not a huge reach to imagine bits of impact debris fluttering and rolling across Curiosity's path, blown by the breeze, is it?

[atomoid]

It's likely to be debris from EDL, we are downwind of the descent path aren't we?
a new but dimmer example of other bright bits currently compiled here

[Pando]

and the heatshield hot with a whack, too...

A freudian slip, I presume?

I agree with Stu, and I'm sure we will come across more man-made stuff laying around as we drive along. I believe that it's expected that the area around the landing site would contain all kinds of debris, considering all the activity during EDL with the pyros firing, thrusters blowing, and parachute deploying...

[Stu]

A freudian slip, I presume?

Haha! Oops!

[Phil Stooke]

An update on MSL from the MEPAG meeting which just concluded:

http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/oct-12/p...SL-Oct2012F.pdf



Phil

[fredk]

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say the little scrap appeared on sol60, during navcam imaging. Here's a comparison of two frames, 35 seconds apart:

A dark mark appears on the second frame (circled) and stays there on subsequent frames. The location matches the scrap's position in the MC image. Clearly the lighting is essentially identical between these two frames. However, these are zoomed to 200%, and we should be very wary of jpeg artifacts. Still, this change looks much greater than other small-scale differences which are clearly due to jpeg noise.

[Marvin]

NASA is now saying this "Object Likely Benign Plastic from Curiosity Rover"

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/w...amp;NewsID=1372

This reminds me of the infamous "bunny" after Opportunity landed. While some claimed NASA deliberately and cruelly ran over said bunny, it turned out to be a piece of the airbag.

NASA will also be holding a teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, Oct. 11.

[atomoid]

You can see that white rabbit and about a half-dozen other colorful little bits of flotsam scattered in Vanden's excellent rendition of the Oppy mission success pano or view the really big picture.

[Decepticon]

Let's fire the laser, we'll know for sure!

OMG I never laughed so hard! That was great.

[fredk]

Speaking of Oppy's detritus, I think the best example was the little spring/coil that's in atomoid's avatar!