now would be a good time to ask about the possibility of self-portraits.

sol 33 seems to be the day for a MAHLI self-portrait(?)

Judging by Google images, this should be an evocative image .

Depends on what you mean by self-portrait, but the belly pan is not what we think of as the self-portrait, nor do we call it the "MAHLI self-portrait" because it's not a self-portrait of MAHLI, but with MAHLI. Some people call the self-portrait of the rover taken with MAHLI the "Myspace image" but I'm too old to know what that means.

Any idea how close we are to Glenelg? There's no new route map, but since the terrain here is quite bland that's not a surprise.

Emily Lakdawalla: Looking at the recent navcam pictures we've noticed that there are some dents on the wheels. I'm wondering if that was expected or surprising for you to see that--tiny dents.

Michael Watkins: Umm, yeah, I think, so we've seen small dents before in our test rovers, you know, up in the Mars Yard and when you're driving around.So I think it's probably, it's pretty much as expected. I think that there's nothing unusual about that. So it may have been associated with the touchdown event or otherwise driving across, you know, some of the pebbles and cobbles and stuff. So we've seen that before and so we're obviously going to try to take reasonable care of the wheels, but nothing unusual so far.

Matt Robinson: Em, this is Matt. It's benign, it's nothing that would cause us any angst or worry about the performance of the wheels or driving.

Leo Enright: My other question, much more generally, I hope, Joy, you won't mind me asking it. Scientists at the moment are kind of in the back seat, but you must have your nose pressed to the window looking all the time, and I just wondered, is there anything you've seen in the immediate locality so far that really interested you and that gave you a flavor for what you think is coming up, even though obviously at the moment the engineers are actually, you know, controlling the steering wheel. Was there anything that really caught your eye? I'm thinking particularly, I thought one stage I thought maybe there was some hint of a vein, a lighter vein in the soil. You know, is there something there that you particularly noticed and made you excited for the future?

Joy Crisp: So this is Joy, uh, there's two main things that have intrigued me, and I think most of the team. One would be the MASTCAM imaging of Mount Sharp and seeing the structures and layers and we're not sure what it all means, but it's pretty spectacular and not something we've ever seen before on Mars, and the other would be the rocks nearby, some of them are showing quite amazing textures that we've not seen before on Mars, some that look like they might have big mineral grains in them that are light in tone and in a dark matrix, umm, just eye-popping but we don't know what it means, so we need to examine rocks like that more thoroughly close up to get at what... how those rocks formed. But that's whats been exciting, to see things that we've not seen on Mars before.

Not sure where to put this question but here goes ...
Could the brush on the arm be used to clean the dust off the rover (cameras, instruments, etc) if need be ?

I think this is the rock Joy Crisp is referring to

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...1_DXXX&s=24

Sol 30 Navcams showing the extended robotic arm .

Could the brush on the arm be used to clean the dust off the rover (cameras, instruments, etc) if need be ?

...an eclipse of the Sun by Phobos should occur inside the landing site ellipse on Sept 13, 16 and 17.
Does someone know if it is planned to image the Sun with the Navcam during these eclipses ?

Does someone know if it is planned to image the Sun with the Navcam during these eclipses ?

... I haven't noticed any solar filter images from MSL yet.

Speaking of dented wheels, what exactly is the material used for Curiosity's wheels (heavy duty plastic or fiberglass)?

Curiosity’s wheels are aluminum, 20 inches (0.5 meter) in diameter, which is twice the size of the wheels on Spirit and Opportunity. They have cleats for traction and for structural support. Curving titanium spokes give springy support. The wheels were machined by Tapemation, Scotts Valley, Calif. Titanium tubing for the suspension system came from Litespeed Titanium, Chattanooga, Tenn.

The lower air pressure does change the behavior of eruptions. On one end you get Venus where every kind of lava extrudes & doesn't explode; on the other end you get Io, where any trace of gas in a magma violently exsolves upon eruption, causing tall ash plumes. You'd expect volcanism on Mars to be more explosive than volcanism on Earth for that reason.

Hello there! ...