Opportunity Sees Tiny Spheres In Martian Soil

NASA - JPL ^ | 02-0402004 | Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters

[Phil V.]

[Phil V.]

Last night's thread . . . Rover OPPORTUNITY microscopic image . . . Martian soil . . . feel free to speculate

If you'd like to be on or off this MARS ping list please FRail me

[WestTexasWend]

Looks kinda like the stuff under our bed (minus the cats)

[blam]

I'm still overwhelmed that we have two active rovers on Mars. Diatoms, I say.

[Hunble]

Nothing yet from NASA about the "bunny" as shown in the panoramic view?

[Spruce]

reformatting its flash memory, a preventive measure that had been planned for earlier in the week. "We spent the last four days in the testbed testing this," Adler said. "It's not an operation we do lightly. We've got to be sure it works right."


If they are formatting data storage volumes, no biggie. For them to be this cautious I can't help but think they are re-installing the OS. Very stressful task, I imagine. You can't even be sure your Data-Link is reliable, not to mention the bandwidth is like using an acoustic modem and a rotary phone.

[Pikamax]

bunny???

[Solamente]

Looks like a screen shot of Morrowind !

[amom]

It just keeps getting better and better. Thanks for the ping Phil.

[GeronL]

Its fascinating, Captain

[Hunble]

Oh, it is most likely some insulation from the lander that has blown across the ground.

However, it is rather interesting that NASA has not posted something about this subject on their website.

[xJones]

NASA's Opportunity has examined its first patch of soil in the small crater where the rover landed on Mars and found strikingly spherical pebbles among the mix of particles there.

When there's a crater it's usually because a meteorite impacted the planet and caused that large hole in the ground. And tiny spheroids are always among the by-products of that impact. IOW, no big deal.

[CJ Wolf]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071395/posts

[djf]

I would hesitate calling them spherical. Ovoid is more appropriate, the root of which is of course "ovum" or egg. Doubt if they are tektite type material from meteor impact, the low gravity of mars and atmosphere would allow molten drops to go high up, seems to me they would be almost perfectly spherical if they were tektites.

Never saw any kind of pumice that looked like that... most with a single, perfect hole at the end!!


Holy spheres, Batman!
Kepler was right!

[Hunble]

Tektites

Tektites are glassy objects that are thought by most scientists today to be melt products of terrestrial rocks formed by hypervelocity impacts of large, extraterrestrial objects. They superficially resemble obsidian in appearance and chemical composition; however, several things distinguish these objects from obsidian. Primarily, they have a very low water content, a low alkali content, and they always contain lechatelierite (pure silica glass).They also often contain coesite (a highly dense silica polymorph), nickel-iron spherules, and baddeleyite (a zircon oxide mineral produced at very high temperatures during shock metamorphism), which lend evidence to a meteorite impact origin. Relict mineral inclusions often yield information about the tektite parent material.

Tektites are assigned to strewnfields, which are the areas over which chemically and physically related tektites are found. The assignment of a strewnfield is based on the oxide composition of a tektite. Four of the major strewnfields are the Australasian, Ivory Coast, Czechoslovakian, and North American strewnfields. Strewnfields include tektites, which are found on land, and microtektites, which are microscopic tektites that have been found in deep-sea sediments. Sizes range from less than 1 mm for microtektites to chunks 10-20 cm in width, with most being a centimeter or so in size and weighing a few grams (Glass, 1982). Tektites display a wide array of sizes, shapes, and surface features. For example, there are splash forms that include spheres, teardrops, dumbbells, and discs, ablated forms also known as "buttons", and chunks known as Muong Nong types that display a layered structure and are found primarily in Southeast Asia.

[eccl1212]

lower left...
magic mushrooms?

those crazy martians!

[U S Army EOD]

When do you think they will find the flag?

[Ichneumon]

That one on the top looks familiar:

[Hunble]

Actually, the one at the top does look like what was shown on Mars.

So far, that would be my first scientific guess.

Remember, the lander is sitting in the middle of a small meteor crater!