THEMIS Image of the Day, November 3, 2016. Today’s VIS image shows a small portion of Gigas Sulci. Located in the Tharsis region, these small linear ridges follow two trends at angle to each other, one toward the upper left corner and the other generally across from right to left. Small dunes are located between the ridges. The ridges were most likely formed by tectonic activity.
More THEMIS Images of the Day by geological topic.
Laser-zapping of a globular, golf-ball-size object on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover confirms that it is an iron-nickel meteorite fallen from the Red Planet’s sky.
Iron-nickel meteorites are a common class of space rocks found on Earth, and previous examples have been seen on Mars, but this one, called “Egg Rock,” is the first on Mars examined with a laser-firing spectrometer. To do so, the rover team used Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.
Scientists of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project, which operates the rover, first noticed the odd-looking rock in images taken by Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) at at a site the rover reached by an Oct. 27 drive.
“The dark, smooth and lustrous aspect of this target, and its sort of spherical shape attracted the attention of some MSL scientists when we received the Mastcam images at the new location,” said ChemCam team member Pierre-Yves Meslin, at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), of France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Toulouse, France. [More at link and here]
Last week on Mars, dust-lifting activity over the northern hemisphere was relatively sporadic. Local-scale dust storms were observed over Amazonis and Deuteronilus. Looking to the southern hemisphere, repeated dust-lifting activity was spotted near the Mountains of Mitchel. This activity stretched westward across Noachis and subsided by the end of the week. A transient dust storm was also spotted along the receding seasonal south… [More at link, including video]
Bedrock exposures in the south wall of Capri Chasma. Beautiful Mars series.
Sol 1508, November 1, 2016, update by USGS scientist Ken Herkenhoff: MSL drove almost 30 meters on Sol 1507, into an area with more dark sand than we have been seeing recently. Because only a few rocks are exposed in the arm workspace, the tactical team decided against contact science in favor of maximizing the drive distance on Sol 1508. The view ahead is good enough to allow a drive of up to 50 meters, but will require more time so we… [More at link]
A sensing technique that the U.S. military currently uses to remotely monitor the air to detect potentially life-threatening chemicals, toxins, and pathogens has inspired a new instrument that could “sniff” for life on Mars and other targets in the solar system — the Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, or BILI.
Branimir Blagojevic, a NASA technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, formerly worked for a company that developed the sensor. He has applied the technology to create an instrument prototype, proving in testing that the same remote-sensing technology used to identify bio-hazards in public places also could be effective at detecting organic bio-signatures on Mars.
BILI is a fluorescence-based lidar, a type of remote-sensing instrument similar to radar in principle and operation. Instead of using radio waves, however, lidar instruments use light to detect and ultimately analyze the composition of particles in the atmosphere.
Although NASA has used fluorescence instruments to detect chemicals in Earth’s atmosphere as part of its climate-studies research, the agency so far hasn’t employed the technique in planetary studies. “NASA has never used it before for planetary ground level exploration. If the agency develops it, it will be the first of a kind,” Blagojevic said. [More at link]
THEMIS Image of the Day, November 2, 2016. The region of hills and mesas at the top of this VIS image are part of Hydaspis Chaos, a typical area of “chaotic terrain.” Scientists think these form when groundwater under pressure breaks through along fault lines. Then the water escapes, underming the surface and causing it to collapse.
More THEMIS Images of the Day by geological topic.
Sol 1507, November 1, 2016. As Curiosity continues its trek toward Mt. Sharp, the Navcam shows the rover is approaching terrain with increasing numbers of wind-rippled patches of sand. Not too much farther ahead these will grow in size and merge into sheets and dunes through the rover drivers must pick a safe path. Click image (1.3 MB) to enlarge it.
Sol 1507 raw images (from all cameras), and Curiosity’s latest location.
Bright streaks in slopes in Bahram Vallis. Beautiful Mars series.
