NASA MARS Rover Opportunity: Investigating Light-toned Veins in Rock Outcrop

Mars Rover Opportunity is on the inboard edge of "Cape York" on the rim of Endeavour Crater, now engaged in in-situ (contact) science investigation of veins in the light-toned outcrop "Whitewater Lake," a place the rover visited previously.

On Sol 3187 (Jan. 10, 2013), the rover bumped a little over a meter to reach the vein targets in the outcrop, named "Ortiz." On Sol 3189 (Jan. 12, 2013), Opportunity, using her robotic arm, collected a large Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of the vein targets.

This was followed by the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration. On Sol 3191 (Jan. 14, 2013), the rover collected more MI mosaics of a target offset from the first and completed this with placing the APXS on the new target.

Opportunity started exhibiting memory symptoms this month similar to events seen with Spirit in 2009. This is not a health and safety concern, but can cause loss of some data intended for downlink.

It can be avoided for more important data by downlinking before any rover nap. The suspect cause is corruption in the flash file system used by the rover for non-volatile telemetry storage.

The project implemented a detection diagnostic on Sol 3189 (Jan. 12, 2013) to flag the occurrence of these events in separate non-volatile memory. No events have occurred since Sol 3183 (Jan. 6, 2013), and the rover remains in good health.

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity: Image of Rock Outcrop named Link

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right).

The image of Link, obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimeters), within the rock outcrop.

Erosion of the outcrop results in gravel clasts that fall onto the ground, creating the gravel pile at left.

The outcrop characteristics are consistent with a sedimentary conglomerate, or a rock that was formed by the deposition of water and is composed of many smaller rounded rocks cemented together.

A typical Earth example of sedimentary conglomerate formed of gravel fragments in a stream is shown on the right.

An annotated version of the image highlights a piece of gravel that is about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) across.

It was selected as an example of coarse size and rounded shape. Rounded grains (of any size) occur by abrasion in sediment transport, by wind or water, when the grains bounce against each other.

Gravel fragments are too large to be transported by wind. At this size, scientists know the rounding occurred in water transport in a stream.

The name Link is derived from a significant rock formation in the Northwest Territories of Canada, where there is also a lake with the same name.

Scientists enhanced the color in the Mars image to show the scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. The Link outcrop was imaged with the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Sept. 2, 2012, which was the 27th sol, or Martian day of operations.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and PSI