Jelly Doughnut Rock on Mars

It's surreal how we can see images from the surface of another planet, and have people on the internet bitching about what a waste of money NASA is and how incredibly boring and uninteresting it is.
It's another planet! People's sense of wonder really has been eroded.

And in this case, that we're still getting great science results and images after ten years from a rover with an original "warranty" period (mission design) of three months. These things are absolute engineering marvels, and I truly envy everyone who's been fortunate enough to work on the program.
 
Just because people lack the imagination or scientific education to understand the research and discovery taking place doesn't mean they should begrudge it to those who do, they should see it as a positive benefit regardless of whether they feel personally engaged by it.
 
Just caught this from JPL -- ample opportunity for additional benefit:

NASA and French Space Agency Sign Agreement for Mars Mission


NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the National Center of Space Studies of France (CNES), signed an implementing agreement Monday for cooperation on a future NASA Mars lander called the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) mission.

"This new agreement strengthens the partnership between NASA and CNES in planetary science research, and builds on more than 20 years of cooperation with CNES on Mars exploration," said Bolden. "The research generated by this collaborative mission will give our agencies more information about the early formation of Mars, which will help us understand more about how Earth evolved."

The InSight mission currently is planned for launch in March 2016 and is scheduled to land on Mars six months later. Designed to study the planet's deep interior, the mission seeks to understand the evolutionary formation of rocky planets, including Earth. InSight also will investigate the dynamics of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts using CNES's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure instrument (SEIS).

SEIS will measure seismic waves travelling through the interior of Mars to determine its interior structure and composition, which will provide clues about the processes that shaped the planet during its earliest stages of formation.
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Nice.
 
I have a question about a term I hear a lot. Martian winter or summer. Wouldn't Mars be in winter and summer at the same time as the earth is? southern and northern hemisphere?
 
I have a question about a term I hear a lot. Martian winter or summer. Wouldn't Mars be in winter and summer at the same time as the earth is? southern and northern hemisphere?
The Martian year is 687 days, one orbit of the sun, vs 365 days for earth. (Day = 24 hours, not a Martian day). Seasons are once per year.
 
FYI: I have no qualifications here, I'm just a very interested amateur. ;)

Larry Crumpler, one of the MER team members, wrote about this in a recent status report:

This rock has some unusually high elements, and elements of the type that are commonly moved by water. Some of the characteristics of the elemental abundances are somewhat like some mineralized deposits here on Earth. So we suspect that something happened here to leech rocks in one place and deposit some of the elements in another. Maybe it was hydrothermal circulation associated with Endeavour crater. Or maybe it was something else from the early days of Mars geologic history. That is why Opportunity is moving in to look at a couple of other rocks.
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(I think he intended to write "unusually high concentrations of elements".)

Endeavour Crater is pictured from orbit in a post #35; it's quite substantial, with a diameter of 22km. It would be neat if the impact's heat energy is responsible for what's being observed in the surrounding rocks.



No, that wasn't part of their design. (See post #11)



Due to the variations in terrain, it's difficult to tell exactly where the rover has driven (and when) from the raw imagery alone; precise details will be available later. From what I can tell, it looks like Opportunity straddled the divot without driving directly on top of it, but I'm not completely sure. How much merit the divot idea has is unclear at the moment -- it looked like a promising explanation for the rock's original position earlier on, but I'm uncertain what to make of it at this point. Opportunity has the ability to pivot in place, so perhaps it was nudged from a nearby position during a maneuver. That might make more sense than it being "kicked" from a straight-line travel sequence.

Hopefully it won't be too long before the team is able to post a comprehensive explanation.



I think that's unlikely at this point.
I guess I should've reworded the question above in reference to "those who are qualified". Sorry. By the looks of it, everyone on this site seems qualified.
 
It's another planet! People's sense of wonder really has been eroded.
You're right about that, and I think thats in part due to the technological and scientific advances we've made in the past few decades. The youth or post baby boomer generation has grown up in the age of the internet where everything is so easily accessible, like a photo from or of another planet. Could you imagine, or better yet do you remember when the first live photos came back from Mariner 4 in the mid to late 60's of the red planet. The whole country was mesmerized by it and it was all over the TV and in every news paper around the US, if not the world... But today, we live in a world where we can actually get the live feed from the red planet, and we don't have to wait for the media to report it. Plus we live in a society where people can be open and question everything. So I think some of the stigma has worn off with the public, and honestly stuff like this seems to intrigue my father more than it does people my age that I work with or friends of mine. I've yet to here someone in a bar talking about Mars and photos from the red planet. I also think this is in part due to the fact the NASA stopped progressing in manned missions beyond the moon. It's a real shame too.
 
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The Martian year is 687 days, one orbit of the sun, vs 365 days for earth. (Day = 24 hours, not a Martian day). Seasons are once per year.
Maybe I wasnt clear. seasons are the tilting of the axis of the planet. not the rotation around the sun. And the areas that tilt toward the sun would be summer. Unless mars do not tilt and and its orbit around the sun is elliptical. Just as winter here in the US and summer in Australia at the same time. Am I wrong?
 
Sorry Mick. It it eliptical and a huge difference 207m km and 249m km. I get it

But winter and summer are still at opposing times for north and south. The eccentricity of the orbit (all orbits are elliptical, even Earth) makes southern martian summers hotter than northern martian summers. Technically they should be referring to "Southern hemisphere martian winter" etc, but generally they abbreviate it to local seasonality, like we do here.

http://www.msss.com/http/ps/seasons/seasons.html

In addition to its scientific potential, Solander Point provides a good place for Opportunity to wait out the southern hemisphere Martian winter, which will peak in February. Solander's slopes are north-facing, allowing Opportunity to tilt its solar panels toward the sun to catch precious but dwindling rays.

"We're in the right place at the right time, on a north-facing slope," Opportunity project manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

The coming winter will be the sixth endured by the golf-cart-size Opportunity, which landed on Mars in January 2004, three weeks after its twin, Spirit. Spirit was declared dead in 2011, but Opportunity is still going strong.

During most of its previous Martian winters, Opportunity was stationary for several consecutive months, soaking up the sun on a north-facing slope. But it should be able to stay mobile for much of this next winter because Solander offers so much north-facing area, mission officials said.
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Some technical info:
http://www.msss.com/http/ps/seasons/seasons.html
The atmospheric pressure is controlled by a complex balance between the cold and warm pole. When the south pole is in total darkness, the north pole is experiencing continuous sunlight, so we might expect that the pressure would stay roughly constant over the year, as CO2 vaporized at one pole only to freeze at the other. However, remember the eccentricity of Mars' orbit -- this causes the solar input when one pole is in sunlight to be significantly different than that when the other pole is in sunlight. We can plot the solar input, or insolation, as a function of time in the martian year (horizontal axis, with the start of northern spring at the left) vs. latitude (vertical axis, with the south pole at the bottom.) Blue indicates the least insolation, and red the most.

Note that the insolation image shows that summer in the southern hemisphere is much warmer than summer in the northern hemisphere, because Mars is farther from the Sun during northern summer. (In contrast, the eccentricity of Earth's orbit is low, and although Earth is actually closer to the Sun during northern winter, the effect of the small variation in solar distance is not noticable.)
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The chart is a little hard to read. But basically the X axis (across) is one year, the Y axis is the latitude. So the bottom is the south pole, the top is the north pole. For any given latitude, you can draw a horizontal line across the chart, and it will tell you how much sun it gets through a martian year.

All three rovers are in the southern hemisphere, but not by much. 2, 4.5, and 15 degrees south, within the "tropics". So a lot of the variation in insolation comes from the eccentricity of the orbit.


Landing near the equator maximizes insolation, which maximizes the power available to the rovers.

(Interesting above, that in the mid-latitudes of the North, the fall and spring get more insolation than the winter. Even at the equator, it looks like there's slight dip midsummer.)
 
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I have a question about a term I hear a lot. Martian winter or summer. Wouldn't Mars be in winter and summer at the same time as the earth is? southern and northern hemisphere?
If you could, theoretically, stand unsuited on the surface of the red planet, you might feel a different temperature at your face than at your feet, according to Michael Smith, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is due to the thinness of Mars’ atmosphere — about 100 times thinner than Earth’s — and a lack of oceans, which on Earth help to moderate temperature. On Mars, temperatures swing wildly from one time of year to another, from day to night, and from the surface to the height of a head above it.

The planet has two different kinds of seasons that interact throughout the course of a Martian year (687 days). There are the familiar winter, spring, summer and fall, caused by the planet’s tilt — 25 degrees to Earth’s 23.

But there are also two additional seasons, aphelion and perihelion, which occur because of Mars’ highly elliptical orbit. Earth’s orbit is nearly circular, meaning its distance from the sun stays largely stable. Mars’ orbit is more elongated, bringing it much closer to the sun at some times of the year than others.

Mars gets about 40 percent more energy from the sun during perihelion — when the planet is closest to the sun — than during aphelion, Smith told Weather.com. “Superimposed on the tilted-axis seasons is this other kind of season, where overall the planet is warmer when it’s near the sun and cooler when it’s far from the sun,” Smith said. “It’s interesting to watch how those two play off of each other.”

Mars’ seasons are marked by distinct weather phenomena, according to Rich Zurek, the lead Mars scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the winter, he explained to Weather.com, much like on Earth, heavy storms of thick cloud cover and dust move over Mars’ continents toward the equator. When Mars sweeps closest to the sun during its southern hemisphere summer, temperatures increase greatly; the extra energy is enough to launch dust storms that envelop large regions of Mars — sometimes the entire planet — for weeks or months. http://www.weather.com/news/science/does-mars-have-seasons-20130910
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Thanks MIck. So we do have rotation of axis with an elliptical orbit. And the indications of liquid water would likely be in the south at summer.
 
Maybe I wasnt clear. seasons are the tilting of the axis of the planet. not the rotation around the sun. And the areas that tilt toward the sun would be summer. Unless mars do not tilt and and its orbit around the sun is elliptical. Just as winter here in the US and summer in Australia at the same time. Am I wrong?
Mars has a tilt on its axis of about 25 degrees as opposed to earth's 23.5 degrees. Here on earth we have 4 distinct season, but on mars they also have 2 additional seasons because of their orbit. Mars has a highly elliptical orbit that ranges from 249,000,000 km away from the sun at aphelion, and when its closest to the sun at perihelion its distance from the sun is about 206,000,000 km away. Thats a variance of about 43,000,000 kms throughout the course of its martian year. Our planet on the other hand only has a slightly elliptical orbit around the sun that has a variance in distance of about 5,000,000 km. So Mars is near perihelion when it is summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the north, and near aphelion when it is winter in the southern hemisphere and summer in the north. This makes weather more extreme in the southern hemisphere.
 
Thanks MIck. So we do have rotation of axis with an elliptical orbit. And the indications of liquid water would likely be in the south at summer.
Water on Mars is mostly present in the form of ice. There is also a small amount of it in the martian atmosphere, in the form of vapor. The only place where water ice is visible on the planet is in the northern hemisphere at the pole, but they also believe there is water in the form of ice trapped below the CO2 ice cap in the south pole. They estimate that there is about 5 billion cubic kilometers of water ice on the Martian planet.
 
Mars has a tilt on its axis of about 25 degrees as opposed to earth's 23.5 degrees. Here on earth we have 4 distinct season, but on mars they also have 2 additional seasons because of their orbit. Mars has a highly elliptical orbit that ranges from 249,000,000 km away from the sun at aphelion, and when its closest to the sun at perihelion its distance from the sun is about 206,000,000 km away. Thats a variance of about 43,000,000 kms throughout the course of its martian year. Our planet on the other hand only has a slightly elliptical orbit around the sun that has a variance in distance of about 5,000,000 km. So Mars is near perihelion when it is summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the north, and near aphelion when it is winter in the southern hemisphere and summer in the north. This makes weather more extreme in the southern hemisphere.

But it's not like they have six seasons. The "additional seasons" are a variation that is overlaid on top of the four "normal" seasons.
 
Did I just get bunked? this video came up after i watched a hubble 3d video. I should have looked better.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars#Evidence_for_recent_flows

Liquid water cannot exist in a stable form on the surface of Mars with its present low atmospheric pressure and low temperature, except at the lowest elevations for a few hours.[165][197] So, a geological mystery commenced when observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed gullydeposits that were not there ten years ago, possibly caused by flowing salty water (brine) during the warmest months on Mars.[198][199][200][201][202][201][203][204][205][206] The images were of two craters called Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes which appear to show the presence of liquid water flows on Mars at some point between 1999 and 2001.[201][207][208][209]

There is disagreement in the scientific community as to whether or not gullies are formed by liquid water. It is also possible that the flows that carve gullies are dry,[210] or perhaps lubricated by carbon dioxide.[211][212] Even if gullies are carved by flowing water at the surface, the exact source of the water and the mechanisms behind its motion are not well understood.[213]

In August 2011, NASA announced the discovery by Nepalese student Lujendra Ojha[214] of current seasonal changes on steep slopes below rocky outcrops near crater rims in the Southern hemisphere. Dark streaks were seen to grow downslope during the warmest part of the Martian Summer, then to gradually fade through the rest of the year, recurring cyclically between years.[10] The researchers suggested these marks were consistent with salty water (brines) flowing downslope and then evaporating, possibly leaving some sort of residue.[215] Because these flows have been the flows form and fade in sync with heat flux into the surface, many scientists feel these recurrent slope lineae are probably the best candidates for features formed by flowing water on Mars today.[199][216][217] The rate of growth of these features has been shown to be consistent with shallow groundwater flow downslope through a sandy substrate.[218]
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I just saw a video that said black lines that show up in the summer. Note the black lines in the video.


It would be nice if liquid water was "in our face" like this clip portrays, but water in the liquid form can't exist on the surface of Mars due to its low atmospheric pressure (which causes the water to boil off into vapor). I suspect what we are seeing in the video you attached are shifting sediments and shadows.
 
It would be nice if liquid water was "in our face" like this clip portrays, but water in the liquid form can't exist on the surface of Mars due to its low atmospheric pressure (which causes the water to boil off into vapor). I suspect what we are seeing in the video you attached are shifting sediments and shadows.
I get that its the same principal I seen on heat pumps in the legs on the alaska pipeline. Liquid placed into tubes under a vacuum will boil at normal freezing temperatures and condense above the permafrost at the top. and same reason when cooking at 5k above sea level where I am we add 25 degrees. Thanks Jason and Mick.
 
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars#Evidence_for_recent_flows

Liquid water cannot exist in a stable form on the surface of Mars with its present low atmospheric pressure and low temperature, except at the lowest elevations for a few hours.[165][197] So, a geological mystery commenced when observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed gullydeposits that were not there ten years ago, possibly caused by flowing salty water (brine) during the warmest months on Mars.[198][199][200][201][202][201][203][204][205][206] The images were of two craters called Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes which appear to show the presence of liquid water flows on Mars at some point between 1999 and 2001.[201][207][208][209]

There is disagreement in the scientific community as to whether or not gullies are formed by liquid water. It is also possible that the flows that carve gullies are dry,[210] or perhaps lubricated by carbon dioxide.[211][212] Even if gullies are carved by flowing water at the surface, the exact source of the water and the mechanisms behind its motion are not well understood.[213]

In August 2011, NASA announced the discovery by Nepalese student Lujendra Ojha[214] of current seasonal changes on steep slopes below rocky outcrops near crater rims in the Southern hemisphere. Dark streaks were seen to grow downslope during the warmest part of the Martian Summer, then to gradually fade through the rest of the year, recurring cyclically between years.[10] The researchers suggested these marks were consistent with salty water (brines) flowing downslope and then evaporating, possibly leaving some sort of residue.[215] Because these flows have been the flows form and fade in sync with heat flux into the surface, many scientists feel these recurrent slope lineae are probably the best candidates for features formed by flowing water on Mars today.[199][216][217] The rate of growth of these features has been shown to be consistent with shallow groundwater flow downslope through a sandy substrate.[218]
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Wow, This was also news for me, so I did a little more digging to try and understand how water could be stable on Mars. I found this article; http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/aug/04/flowing-water-may-exist-on-mars. Here's a quote from the article explaining how its possible for salty brine water to exist on the red planet:
Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who was not involved in the research, believes that the work provides "convincing and exciting" evidence for flowing water on the surface of Mars. He says that McEwen and colleagues are "entirely justified" in pinpointing brine as the explanation, pointing out that Mars is so dry that even at temperatures as low as –70 °C, water can still evaporate. "The only way to have persistent liquid water is to find a way for it to remain liquid near –70 °C," he says. "Brines can do that."
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They also considered several other possibilities from shifting sediments avalanching down the slope to evaporating ice below the surface, but both proved impossible...
 
^ JPL recently posted about continuing research from the same author: NASA Mars Orbiters See Clues to Possible Water Flows
I think the next logical question would be if organisms can survive in these salty brine's. I mean the whole premise of if there's water there should be life is the main focus when discovering other planets outside of our solar system and even some of the moons in our own solar system. Does NASA or any other space agency have another planned robotics mission to Mars, because if they do this could be a great place to start out in.
 
I think the next logical question would be if organisms can survive in these salty brine's. I mean the whole premise of if there's water there should be life is the main focus when discovering other planets outside of our solar system and even some of the moons in our own solar system. Does NASA or any other space agency have another planned robotics mission to Mars, because if they do this could be a great place to start out in.

Terrestrial brine pools support a whole range of life so in theory life could be supported on Mars, although probably simple organisms like bacteria.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_pool
 
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-051



Mars Rover Heads Uphill After Solving 'Doughnut' Riddle

February 14, 2014

Researchers have determined the now-infamous Martian rock resembling a jelly doughnut, dubbed Pinnacle Island, is a piece of a larger rock broken and moved by the wheel of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in early January.

Only about 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters), the white-rimmed, red-centered rock caused a stir last month when it appeared in an image the rover took Jan. 8 at a location where it was not present four days earlier.

More recent images show the original piece of rock struck by the rover's wheel, slightly uphill from where Pinnacle Island came to rest.

"Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance," said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. "We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from."

Examination of Pinnacle Island revealed high levels of elements such as manganese and sulfur, suggesting these water-soluble ingredients were concentrated in the rock by the action of water. "This may have happened just beneath the surface relatively recently," Arvidson said, "or it may have happened deeper below ground longer ago and then, by serendipity, erosion stripped away material above it and made it accessible to our wheels."

Now that the rover is finished inspecting this rock, the team plans to drive Opportunity south and uphill to investigate exposed rock layers on the slope.
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Ah-ha! Neat.

I started to suspect as much when later imagery revealed those white fragments near Stuart Island. Not having a complete track of the rover's movements made it difficult to pinpoint earlier.
 
How is a damaged wheel making a case for anything other than having rolled over some rocks?
Fragments, and there's an obvious missing piece(s) of the wheel which could lead to or have lead to confusion about seeing those tiny small metalic pieces if I remember correctly.
 
The ones I can think of off hand looked metallic, but were plastic on closer examination. Those ended up being packing material off the crazy flying skycrane system that landed Curiosity.

But, yeah, Curiosity has been breaking little bits off all over Mars (both off itself and off Mars). It's bigger and much more powerful than earlier rovers, and with the time delay in sending commands all rovers have little choice but to blunder through the landscape on a wing and a prayer. "Leave only footprints" is not in the astronaut handbook.
 
OT: Do you know why they chose these types of wheels ober lets say rubber or some other material that's better for traversing rocky and soft sand terrain. I remember taking my jeep onto the beach when I was in college and I had to let a considerable amount of air out of the tire so I didn't get stuck. So why would they choose such a hard surface. Obviously they didn't do it in a whim and ran many test but just curious to know why they went with this design.
 
Rubber that's been exposed to temperature extremes can dry out and become brittle, at which point it just flakes off the wheel. On Earth that's only really an issue with the type of rubber we use in tires (they'll fail from use long before this happens, but if you go to a tire dump or find a very old tire swing you can still see tires that have done this), but Opportunity has braved five Martian winters plus a year in space, and the warmest summer days its gotten are still comparable to a brutal arctic winter. Not to mention the damage sand and dust can do to inflated rubber tires, and Opportunity has survived several massive dust storms.

The tires have to last the life of the rover (which for opportunity is over ten Earth years now) in that environment, so they pretty much have to be metal.
 
quote:
"This may have happened just beneath the surface relatively recently," Arvidson said, "
or it may have happened deeper below ground longer ago and then,
by serendipity, o_O
erosion stripped away material above it and made it accessible to our wheels."
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"serendipity" is BS in regard to "deeper below the ground longer ago"
... that just happened below the surface relatively recently.

For NASA to even mention that possibility of recent sub surface action,
usually indicates that this is the better of the two proposals on the formation of the rock.

One quote mentioned enstatite chondrites.
I find enstatite here in the field mineral searches of the Devil's Fault,
for x ray diffraction research.
They are found in glacial till in the rock bars.
Thanks for that info.
 
It's not BS. Mars is an active planet, and used to be far more active. In the areas we sent Spirit and Opportunity nearly the entire surface is the product of erosion, and much of what is present there used to be buried several meters to tens of meters deep, which is why those areas were chosen to begin with. Its serendipity for one specific rock thus exposed to be the one overturned by the rover passing, but if it wasn't this one, it could have been any of the other thousands.

Curiosity is the first rover targeted with the benefit of continuous satellite monitoring, the rest we had to target blind. Sojurnor's site was mainly chosen to accomodate the limits of the rover. Spirit and Opportunity (the one that found Pinnacle Island, aka the jelly doughnut) where targeted at deeply eroded flatlands that accommodated their limitations but also gave the highest hopes for water-related science.

Curiosity, being much bigger and more capable, could have gone almost anywhere and was targeted at an area where we know landslides had happened recently thanks to that continuous orbital view, where there was already good evidence for either water or geological activity, or both.
 
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