back to article Rickety rock deemed unworthy of Curiosity's drill

NASA's plans to conduct its fourth major drilling project have been called off after the proposed target, dubbed Bonanza King, proved unstable. Bonanza King on Mars Site proves a bit too shaky for scanning Last week the rover found the drilling site after detouring through the northeastern end of “Hidden Valley,” on its …

  1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    A stone?

    I can tell you exactly what it is - it's a pot of soup accidentally dropped to the ground. You can see the pottery shards scattered all around and the bone? Well, of course you want a bone if you're making a soup, don't you?

    Call the Time Team and they will tell you whether it's Roman or Anglo-Saxon or whatever...

    1. Bernard M. Orwell

      Re: A stone?

      ...they'd say it was clearly for ritual purposes. It's what they say when they don't know.

      1. Winkypop Silver badge

        Re: A stone?

        A Temple!

  2. i like crisps
    Alien

    Could be Donkey poo

    The Pleasure Beach does get kind of busy, at Blackpool, this time of year.

  3. 1Rafayal

    doesnt matter if it is a bone or not, the fact people from Earth are driving this thing around on the surface of another planet is much more breathtaking.

    Although, we should actively discourage too many people from doing this, otherwise we will end up with a congestion charge...

    1. Yugguy

      I know - it's massively amazing when you stop and think about what's involved.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. bones

    Still not convinced, this doesen't look like erosion to me.

    If you look at the rest of the image you can clearly see part of a pelvis, a vertebra and possibly skull fragments so this could be a monumental discovery proving the past existence of complex life on Mars.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Re. bones

      You also see the tread prints - the bloody robot run whoever it was over!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hmmm

    Regarding the "bone picture", one can never say for sure at 30 million miles but there is something very interesting about the entire scene in that picture. As someone who has worked with and broken a wide variety of rocks and rock types, the shattered rock in the middle of the picture is just as interesting. Rocks don't shatter on their own. They may crack or even a piece can fall off from a crack, but shatter into small and large pieces? Highly improbable, like nearly impossible. It requires force to blow them apart like that and the edges look "clean" so it was relatively recent. Recent on Mars probably being different than "recent" on earth. Plus the straight line indentations in the dirt and the strange shading differences at what appears to be the edge of this area are all very puzzling. If one was walking in the desert on earth and saw this, it would be evidence of some human involvement, but that isn't possible on Mars now is it? As a rock hound, I have seen similar scenes many times because people come through rock areas with sledgehammers and large rock picks and walk along and hit rocks that might look interesting so they can see inside and determine if they are valuable. The smashed rocks end up looking like the shattered one in the picture - depending on their composition. Clean-face shards all around. Are we not the first to go there?

    1. Tim Bergel

      Re: hmmm

      The straight line indentations in the dirt are wheel tread marks from the rover. It weighs almost a ton (890 Kg) so that's why the rock shattered recently...

      Mystery solved.

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