Curiosity's Curious Anomalies Thread

[WillEase666 Profile]

After the first scoop-and-shake revealed the unexpected object, Curiosity took a quick break to examine the find. It then got back on course, taking a second scoop of soil on 12 October. But the hole Curiosity dug also contained bright particles, forcing the team to dump the load due to worries that the rover was picking up pieces of its own robotic debris.

Further scrutiny now suggests that at least some of the unidentified particles are in fact native to Mars. Images show light-toned particles embedded in clumps of excavated soil, implying that they couldn't have been shed by the rover.

NASA is currently preparing to take a third sample from the site as well as more pictures, which should help them figure out whether the bright bits are unwelcome litter or something worthy of delivery to the rover's on-board lab equipment.

It wouldn't be the first rover glitch to uncover scientific treasure. In 2007, Curiosity's older cousin Spirit lost the use of one of its wheels and was forced to drag it across the Martian terrain. This scraped away a layer of soil, and when Spirit looked back, images showed the dead wheel had exposed a swath of bright material.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... overy.html
That patch turned out to be the first evidence of silica on Mars, and silica is a mineral that most often forms in the presence of hot water.

[WillEase666 Profile]

Bright Particle of Martian Origin in Scoop Hole
This image contributed to an interpretation by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity science team that some of the bright particles on the ground near the rover are native Martian material. Other light-toned material nearby (see PIA16230) has been assessed as small debris from the spacecraft.

Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera took this image on the mission's 66th Martian day, or sol, (Oct. 12, 2012) showing part of the hole or bite left in the ground when Curiosity collected its first scoop of Martian soil five sols earlier. A clod of soil near the top center of the image contains a light-toned particle. The observation that the particle is embedded in the clod led scientists to assess this particle as Martian material, not something from the spacecraft. This assessment prompted the mission to continue scooping in the area, despite observations of a few light-toned particles in the area being scooped.

The image shows an area about 2 inches (5 centimeters) across. It is brightened to improve visibility in the shaded area.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/m ... 16229.html

[Kaarmaa Profile]

Not sure about this video but perhaps someone a little more versed on these topics can post their thoughts??

Upload to Disclose.tv

Hello

I'm not "a little more versed on this topic" but I'll post anyway

My first idea about this video was that, if the Mars atmosphere is thinner than earths it might not have the same skycolor. Plus, and here's where I almost could have ridiculed myself (more than I do usually ), I thought that the sky is blue because of the reflection of the seas !!! That's what I learned when I was a child. And I thought that, as there are no seas on Mars, there could be no blue sky .
I'm glad I googled before posting. This is what they say :

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

The sky is filled with air. Air is a mixture of tiny gas molecules and small bits of solid stuff, like dust.

As sunlight goes through the air, it bumps into the molecules and dust. When light hits a gas molecule, it may bounce off in a different direction. Some colors of light, like red and orange, pass straight through the air. But most of the blue light bounces off in all directions. In this way, the blue light gets scattered all around the sky.

When you look up, some of this blue light reaches your eyes from all over the sky. Since you see blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html

Why is the Mars sky red?

Images sent back from the Viking Mars landers in 1977 and from Pathfinder in 1997 showed a red sky seen from the Martian surface. This was due to red iron-rich dusts thrown up in the dust storms occurring from time to time on Mars. The colour of the Mars sky will change according to weather conditions. It should be blue when there have been no recent storms, but it will be darker than the earth's daytime sky because of Mars' thinner atmosphere.

http://www.ozgate.com/infobytes/mars_weather.htm

Like storms on Earth, Martian storms usually occur at particular latitudes. Most are short-lived, although they can cover vast areas. In 1999, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed a colossal cyclone near Mars' north pole. It was close to the Martian midsummer in the northern hemisphere, when the planet's weather is agitated by increasing temperatures. The storm clouds had the same spiral structure as cyclones on Earth—but this Martian example was more than 1,000 miles across.

The clouds contain mainly water ice crystals that have evaporated from the north polar ice cap and refrozen high in the atmosphere. A similar phenomenon occurs in Antarctica, but without the cyclone. There, the thin, high ice crystals that form the clouds sometimes drift to the ground as so-called "diamond dust." During summer in the north, such clouds are seen throughout most of the northern hemisphere of Mars, but there is no evidence that any of their water crystals ever fall to the surface.

Even in midsummer, most of Mars7 water remains locked in the polar ice caps. These are a mix of water ice and frozen carbon dioxide (CO^). As summer advances, much of the solid CO^ sublimates directly into gas. Summer is also the season for the great Martian dust storms. These dust storms often take place regionally, but in some years they seem to combine to form a dust-laden tempest that can cover the whole planet.

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/faq/2009/05/05/what-color-martian-sky

What color is the Martian sky?
The short answer is: Mars probably has a dull yellowish-beige, slightly pink-brownish tinted sky, sometimes described as "butterscotch." Some well-calibrated pictures (and some poorly-calibrated ones for comparison) are available from Don Davis's Color of Mars.

http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html


So it seems it's all about the weather conditions. I like the red/orange Mars sky, it looks less earthly.

[WillEase666 Profile]

Published on Oct 19, 2012 by NewsyScience

The Curiosity Rover on Mars began ingesting dirt into its chassis this week. The dirt will be examined using the rover's CheMin system.

Upload to Disclose.tv

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images ... 1_DXXX.jpg

[Nilm33 Profile]

Published on Oct 19, 2012 by NewsyScience

The Curiosity Rover on Mars began ingesting dirt into its chassis this week. The dirt will be examined using the rover's CheMin system.

Upload to Disclose.tv

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images ... 1_DXXX.jpg

Its unbelievable that all those extremely sensitive instruments survived the harshest trip imaginable. Millions of miles in a cold radioactive vaccum, then plunged into an atmosphere, then inundated in a alien environment covered in dust and dirt, tumbling around in the chassis of a machine...

Put a chemical analyzer outside on Earth and I bet it will break down in a week... by just sitting outside.

[WillEase666 Profile]

[-Marduk- Profile]

Upload to Disclose.tv

[WillEase666 Profile]

Published on Dec 3, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish

Less than four months ago, the US space agency's (NASA) Curiosity rover landed on Mars. Since then, scientists have been testing the rover's instruments and taking samples of Martian soil, in order to analyse the compounds and send its data back here to Earth. They have just given their first full update on what they have discovered.

Upload to Disclose.tv

So, the only interesting thing the 2.5 billion dollar rover has found is still...

[Toxic32 Profile]

The only thing that concerns me is the fact that this rover is pact full of state of the art instruments and cameras all over the place. But what we get is drip fed to us. Just enough to keep the interest. But masses of data is being streamed back to earth. Which we don't see or hear about. It seems they are cheery picking what they release? I'm probably wrong but that's not new's

[Marcydare Profile]

Miniature rocket launcher operated by Micro Reptile Humanoids.