jbridges
Subscribe to jbridges's posts16th August 2016 Sol 1432
The Veins of Mars The Veins of Mars Dr Samuel Illingworth of Manchester Metropolitan University has written a poem about the sulphate veins on Mars that we have just published about in Meteoritics and Planetary Science. By Samuel Illingworth Your crater stands abandoned in the dirt, As thirsty dreams evaporate for good; Beneath your […]
12th August 2016 Sol 1428
Our latest drill hole – Marimba – has a distinctly reddish colour. This probably means it has a lot of ferric oxide in it. This is the sort of mineral signature we are expecting as we get close to Hematite Ridge and suggest the chemistry of the ancient groundwaters and related minerals are changing as we […]
29th July 2016 Sol 1415
We are getting some fantastic views of Murray Buttes, with Mt Sharp in the background.The Murray mudstone forms the low ground around the buttes.
19th July 2016 Sol 1405
MSL is back and working as normal. This MastCam picture shows that even at this early stage of the dust season (ls = 190 ie we haven’t reached perihelion of Mars orbit yet) the crater rim is becoming obscured.
6th July 2016 Sol 1392
No current photos because MSL has gone into safe mode for the last few days due to a software glitch. That means we wont get images or much data back for a few days. This has happened 3 times before so we are confident Curiosity will soon be up and working again.
24th June 2016 Sol 1380
Here is the latest HiRISE image of Curiosity. It shows the rover on the Naukluft Plateau where we have been for the last few months. We are now driving south – back onto the Murray formation lacustrine mudstones and on to the Hematite Ridge within a year. The full image can be seen at: […]
13th June 2016 Sol 1370
Here is the Oudam drillhole and the nearby dump piles for material that has been analysed by CheMin. Curiosity is now producing a fast turnaround for drilling and analysing – essential to link mineralogy to ChemCam and APXS analyses. We are working on a ChemCam team-led model to link the silica-rich mineralogy to the fluid […]
26th May 2016 Sol 1352
We are studying an area called Fracture Town. The aim is to follow up identification of opal to check the extent to which silica has been remobilised by fluids in the sediments. Intriguingly we have found both detrital silica – a mineral called tridymite – probably brought in from silica-rich volcanic rocks, and amorphous silica/opal which […]
11th May 2016 Sol 1337
Sol 1337 means that we have just reached our second martian year since landing in 2012, Here is a birthday cake to the mission from the ChemCam team in Toulouse. In martian calendar terms we are at aerocentric longitude Ls (L sub s) = 150o which is southern hemisphere, late winter.
9th May 2016 Sol 1336
We have followed up the Lubango drillhole quickly with another one at a nearby Stimson aeolian sandstone outcrop (Okoruso). The idea is to compare unaltered sandstone (Okoruso) to altered Lubango.
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