MSL at Rocknest, First scoop samples - sols 57-101 |
MSL at Rocknest, First scoop samples - sols 57-101 |
Oct 3 2012, 12:30 AM
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#1
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Curiosity has put more than 400 meters on the odometer and tosol (sol 56) she bumped up to a sand drift that we now know (via Twitter) is named Rocknest and will be the site of the first sample grab. In last week's press briefing, John Grotzinger warned that we will be here for "what seems like a very long time," 2-3 weeks. They will have to run several samples through the SA-SPaH (Sample Acquisition, Processing and Handling subsystem, pronounced "Saw-spa") and in particular CHIMRA (Collection and Handling for In situ Martian Rock Analysis, pronounced "chimera") in order to "clean" it of any remaining Earthly contamination with good Mars dirt before they deliver the first sample to SAM or Chemin. So this seems like a good place to start a new thread.
As usual, discuss stuff that happened through sol 56 in the previous thread. -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Nov 5 2012, 04:53 PM
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#2
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Also, watch out for the optical illusion that a gray material will look green when surrounded by a red material. I checked the RGB values of that "green" material and it's actually brown or orange (R and G roughly equal but R always greater than G, much lower blue), it just looks green by comparison to the bright red dust. I would not recommend attempting to determine mineralogy from Mastcam photos. You can tell dust-covered surfaces (red) from less dusty surfaces (gray, blue, or green-looking), and you should be surprised by stuff that looks white. Some rocks appear to have different colors when compared to each other, but that's about as far as I'd go in interpreting color. I would certainly not guess at mineralogy.
Zelenyikot: nice work! -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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