Seymour Buttes
Coat: Somebody had to say it
Curiosity rover likes big buttes but it cannot lie around
Mars looks just like the American southwest, says NASA after landing images of some big buttes on Mars. The Curiosity rover has spent the last few weeks in a region of Mars called “Murray Buttes” that apparently reveals “The layered geologic past of Mars”. We're not sure what's in those layers, but NASA speculates that the …
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Monday 12th September 2016 07:57 GMT VinceH
An extract leaked from an internal memo at NASA...
"If we publish some photos from here on Earth and say they were taken by Curiosity on Mars, we can comment on how remarkable it is that they resemble similar (hoho, the same) American Southwestern desert locations. That way, the scenery will be that much more believable if we use those same locations when we fake a manned landing on Mars at some point in the future."
(But being serious... bloody fantastic images.)
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Monday 12th September 2016 09:41 GMT Paul Cooper
Re: Very optimistic...
Not very likely if these are subaerial deposits; similar deposits in the UK (e.g. Old Red Sandstone) have very few fossils. Fossils are more likely in fluviatile and marine deposits, where organisms either live in the sediment or can be rapidly buried by flood events after death.
That said, I wouldn't have immediately said these were subaerial deposits; opinions of the classic Old Red Sandstone in the UK have varied from subaerial dune deposits to estuarine or shallow water megadunes
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Monday 12th September 2016 14:05 GMT Tom Paine
Re: Very optimistic...
I'm a bit out of touch with recent findings from Curiosity, but AIUI the tentatively suggested history of Gale Crater has it repeatedly filling with water draining in from the surrounding plains and forming moderately long-lasting bodies of standing water. If you click around the pics on unmannedspaceflight.com's Curiosity forum you'll see plenty of examples of cross-plane bedding, diagnostic of sediment deposits in flowing water. (I think. Cluestick spoken here.)
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Monday 12th September 2016 16:15 GMT Paul Cooper
Re: Very optimistic...
Not necessarily. The Devonian Old Red Sandstone of the UK, characterized by massive cross-bedding, was traditionally thought to be an aeolian deposit, but they are now thought to be mainly fluvial. Large dunes and sandwaves, where cross-bedding is formed, is not confined to aeolian deposits, but is commonplace in deposits laid down from flowing water. Large dunes are also found in submarine environments.
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Monday 12th September 2016 08:58 GMT lglethal
Lasers! Lasers! Nuclear Powered Lasers!!!
Can we ditch the name Curiosity? I propose that from now on we call the robot beast simply "The Laser-Wielding, Nuclear-Powered Space Tank on Mars"! It has a much cooler ring to it! ;)
(Ps - a very nice reference to Sir Mixalot in there Simon! Well Done!)
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Monday 12th September 2016 14:10 GMT Tom Paine
. NASA plans to release a few more similar images in coming days.
Actually JPL (not NASA) release the raw image data more or less as soon as it hits the ground (within a few minutes -- there's a workflow process for sampling the enormous originals into something more web browser friendly.) There's a thriving community of so-called "amateurs" working with the data to produce panoramas and mosaics that will blow your socks off -- especially if you have a 40,000 px wide monitor...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=a523a7623212664f2a2649fa6e0c511c&showforum=59
Biting the hand that feeds IT
