MSL at Rocknest, First scoop samples - sols 57-101 Options

[ollopa]

To me it looks exactly like flour. Completely dry, yet cohesive -- that's the nature of very fine-grained material.

"109:23:38 Armstrong: I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. "

And I've always thought he then said: "Now and then it gets very fine", which I always took to mean total powder (not the garbled transcript on ALSJ), all of which speaks to how fine this stuff can really get. (Yes, I know Luna isn't Mars)

[dvandorn]

Seeing MAHLI's images of the scuffed ripple's interior, a question popped in my head; is the chemical makeup of sand drifts all over Mars generally homogenous or are they extremely different globally as dirt that make them up don't get to move around very much like the lighter, easily transported dust?

Likely very similar all around Mars, with some hard-to-predict local admixtures. Remember that Mars gets global dust storms and a lot of the dust gets distributed globally.

-the other Doug

[dvandorn]

And I've always thought he then said: "Now and then it gets very fine", which I always took to mean total powder (not the garbled transcript on ALSJ), all of which speaks to how fine this stuff can really get. (Yes, I know Luna isn't Mars)

Actually, I've discussed this with Eric Jones who compiled the ALSJ, and I'm comfortable with his interpretation that this sentence was "The ground mass is, uh, very fine." This was one of the items on Neil's observation checklist pre-flight, to describe the ground mass, and there is even a recording of Neil during a simulation saying of the sand that had been set up around the ladder on the training unit that "the ground mass is sandy, like beach sand," which of course it was.

Yes, Mars is not Luna, and you get very different erosion processes on a planet that has even a thin atmosphere vs. a moon that has none. In general, there is much greater variation in grain sizes in Martian soils as opposed to lunar soils. On the Moon, you either have very fine dust or rocks from cobbles up to boulders. Because grains in the Martian soil were transported by water (a long time ago) and since by wind, you get much more well-sorted soil fines and a lot of very fine grains deposited by the global dust storms. Add to this the continual impact mixing, and, well Martian soils are far more complex than anything you'd ever find on Luna.

-the other Doug

[Joffan]

great cross eyed image

The slight slumping and cracking around the wheel marks seem to imply some sort of lightly cemented crust. So these little drifts are probably not active. ( I see that this has been discussed. But could all these drifts the mers and curiosity have treaded be inactive because they are crusted?)

Actually... that's a parallel/diverge eyes image. Here's a cross-eyed version:

[kenny]

Sol 58 images coming down now. I like this one:


Full size

It reminds me of this very sharp ribbed footprint on Oceanus Procellarum taken in Nov 1969 on Apollo 12. No water involved.

The LRI web site is very slow at the moment, however:

Apollo 12 boot print low res

High res:

Apollo 12 boot print high res

[paraisosdelsiste...]

Two different views of the wheel track. You can push them for a higher resolution version:

MastCam Left:



MastCam Right:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[EdTruthan]

...makes for a nice stereo pairing too, especially zoomed in....

[elakdawalla]

Sol 59 images arriving now. Just a stomp to the left, and a step to the right...

[EdTruthan]

Sol 59 Front Hazcam - looks like they've backed up several meters from the Rocknest drift...

[Joffan]

Sol 59 images arriving now. Just a stomp to the left, and a step to the right...

... let's do the dune warp again!

I'm a bit dizzy... not sure where the horizon is on that one

[Explorer1]

The dune in front of MSL now is about half the height of the front wheels (according to my eyes). We know there's solid rock right underneath, while it was quite the opposite at Purgatory.
They know what they're doing.

[brellis]

It's like starting Chapter 2 of a really fantastic novel. I love this!

[James Sorenson]

Dropping in with new images...

[udolein]

Lots of MAHLI activities on sol 60:


enlarged animation

Cheers, Udo

[udolein]

It's astonishing for me how fast the data are accessible on earth. It's now 4:40 pm for Curiosity on Mars and the sol 60 images are on earth since a couple of (earth) hours now.
When exactly happens the afternoon Odyssey pass at the landing area ?

Awesome !

Cheers, Udo