Spirit Mars Rover Reaches 'Home Plate': Formation Has Researchers Puzzled

space.com...


Interesting that something on Mars has mainstream scientists puzzled.

I keep getting a "document contains no data" message when I click on the link.

Originally posted by BRCMontana
I keep getting a "document contains no data" message when I click on the link.

Same here, however I'l try to look around the site and see if I can find the link myself.

www.space.com...

the www was missing in the original link.

I believe this are the pictures in question.

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

Looks like lots of plating on the stone formations. I'm not a rock kinda guy but my opinion is that that's definitive proof that water once ran there.

[edit on 11/2/06 by Karper]

Wow, that thing is still going? I thought it broke down in like December, with the other one. How come nobody talks about it any more? Haha. what a waste of several million (billion?) dollars.

First link works for me.

Moving this thread to Space Exploration.

Hmmm... that very odd topography, especially for Mars. The lines look like one of two things.

First, it seems almost like glacial marks - which doesn't make much sense, not only because of the large lack of water on mars, but because such lines should be worn away by erosion (we got similar marks here in Sudbury on the rocks - but they're not as pronounced, because of erosion).

Secondly, it also seems like earthquake lines, shock lines. This doesn't make much sense though because nothing suggests a plate tectonic structure on Mars.

So, yeah, this is a little strange. It's definitely a natural phenomenon that's very old (since it appears in all the rocks, all in the same direction, but some rocks have been displaced - giving weight to age) - but what that phenomenon is... I haven't the slightest clue. Perhaps a massive martian tornado picked up a big rock and dragged it? That doesn't make much sense either... but those are the only three things I can think would POSSIBLY create something like this.

So yeah, interesting structure.

Originally posted by Yarcofin
Wow, that thing is still going? I thought it broke down in like December, with the other one. How come nobody talks about it any more? Haha. what a waste of several million (billion?) dollars.

I think the fact it's still going is evidence of several billion dollars well spent!

I guess it's just up to your perspective. The amount of data collected by this mission is astounding. The data is coming in waaaay too fast for NASA to analyze it thouroughly. This mission will be paying off for the next 100 years or more as the data is scrutinized and sifted through.

Originally posted by Yarium
Hmmm... that very odd topography, especially for Mars. The lines look like one of two things.

First, it seems almost like glacial marks - which doesn't make much sense, not only because of the large lack of water on mars, but because such lines should be worn away by erosion (we got similar marks here in Sudbury on the rocks - but they're not as pronounced, because of erosion).

Secondly, it also seems like earthquake lines, shock lines. This doesn't make much sense though because nothing suggests a plate tectonic structure on Mars.

So, yeah, this is a little strange. It's definitely a natural phenomenon that's very old (since it appears in all the rocks, all in the same direction, but some rocks have been displaced - giving weight to age) - but what that phenomenon is... I haven't the slightest clue. Perhaps a massive martian tornado picked up a big rock and dragged it? That doesn't make much sense either... but those are the only three things I can think would POSSIBLY create something like this.

So yeah, interesting structure.

I don't see how it's any of these things.

These look to be more "cleavage" than glacial striations (which are on the surface of a rock, not through-out the rock. Notice how the rock has these 'cleavage' all the way down, as if you could take the rocks apart in plates).

And earthquakes do not occur because of "Tectonics". Tectonics is the motion of plates across the Earth's surface, it's almost unique to Earth; but recent evidence of vertical motion of crust on Venus has created a form of "Venusian Tectonics" that is being studied.

Earthquakes are due to slips of large or even small bodies of rock past eachother as the stress exceeds their static friction or something like that.

It can be due to anything and is not necessarily due to tectonics (though many earthquakes occur at subduction zones).

This doesn't look like a "Damage Zone" anyway, which is what you'd expect at a fault zone.

Fault zones are typically much more minute...things like slickenslides and damage zones are not so prevalent as what you see in this image.

And they are usually symmetrical...that is...they mirror around the fault plane.

Here there doesn't seem to be symmetry in that sense.

In short, it looks like (as they said) volcanic in nature (which would put it at 3.5 billion years or older) and weathered along unresistant layers...the banding can be due to maybe a regional metamorphism, or maybe different lava flows over many millions of years.

Without a look at the mineralogy there's not much you can say about these rocks.

Also it's in the Gusev crater, so these rocks could have been reworked or relocated by the catastrophy of the meteoric impact.