Spirit - Still Alive - volume 2

sol 2019 ( Sep 9, 2009 ) infrared of soil of Troy:

with a closeup link of the peculiar bright infrared feature.

I have started a new topic because of the "too many connections" error.

Horton, Thanks much for the animations of changes to the disturbed soil of Troy, especially the set linked in reply 378 of the old Spirit Still Alive thread. The disturbed area seems to be slowly expanding by collapse of the walls inward, and the rat press seems to be "relaxing", becoming less distinct at surprising speed. Many of the particles in the soil are too large to be moved by the wind.

I think that there is a lot going on at Troy. The trench wall wasting seems like a combination of gravitation and a slow change of state that is progressively loosening the newly exposed wall material.

This is where Spirit has been headed all along. Now she's up to her wheel-tops in just what we came for - water and Life, in one of their more concentrated Martian forms. It seems that the rover minders are most interested in getting unstuck so Spirit can go look for evidence that this is volcanism. Isn't anyone working on the problem of what Troy and Tyrone and the rest could be if they are not extremely rare hotsprings? How many times would one have to land on Earth before finding ancient hotsprings? Come on! We've found something alien!

My,my,my, Kye Goodman,you have hit the nail squarely on the head.You are absolutly correct,there are things going on in this MUD HOLE.
We are on another planet Remember?
We now have a different set of rules.Remember.
I do apologize for preaching to my peers.
The excitement of the moment,is impossible to put into words.
ANY (I repeat) ANY and All explanations are
(scientific of course) called for.
Can we dig a little hole here and watch it fill up?
I really do hope so.The sponginess of Troy sinkhole,is very scary.Some resemblance of understanding this phenomenon is mandatory to say the least.
Horton,God bless you,old boy,and keep it up,keep it up,keep it up,You are our HERO.
All the regular contributors here are my Heros.This message is a letter saying "Thank You" to the guys and gals that edit,speculate,argue,describe and apply their educated and therefore plausable
theories to data received.Sorry,Dana for
the dumb and stupid remark concerning your
spider network.
Respectfully
Joe in Texas,where God is great,beer is good and people are crazy.

For the first time I am working a reply in Word as I am fed up with Error posts on this site going on about too many connections what ever that means.

My thoughts on where we are with Spirit is Home Plate has always been considered to be Yellow Stone on Mars and the type of soil that has been dug up is evidence of running water, I wonder if it smells of Methane around here or even Sulpher. Sprit is stuck, has a limp and cannot smell too well either but has hit something really good here.

Changes in the soil are all of these plus a rising and falling of humidity, dust fallout from the storm and sublimation as seen with Phoenix each time a scoop was studied and the clumpy gloopy soil. Here we have a cakey top soil with a soft very quick sand under soil, I wonder if any heat rises up from beneath.

Dana has shown possible evidence of a Mud Volcano and if one of the Orbiters said yeah there is one how easily could we land there, Mars has covered Herself up very well in a shroud of dust and Sand. Maybe Troy tells us even if you do know where to land you need to be able to drill and avoid sinking.

One of these might help………

http://davidszondy.com/future/Thunderbirds/mole.htm

sol 2016 ( Sep 4, 2009 ) 3D of "rock needles":

with a location link.

There are dozens of these needle-like rocks in this area.

What can they possibly be?

It could be what is called Pele's hair which are strands of Volacanic debris like glass that get thrown very high up and can be blown several miles from the actual eruption point.

[link]

Anyone remembers a similar situation at Meridiani where a ratted hole, when reimaged, showed an accumulation of gunk that was explained as due to wind?

Here's my gif animation of the incident

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/153425717_6BC8M-X3.gif

Winston

Ill go with wind and condensation, water type. Nice image Winston

Fred

Google "ice needles"
Steve's Digicam Forums, Jan 23,2009

Another reason to add moisture sensors to the next rovers
Are the current temperature readings of the rovers accessible somewhere btw?

sol 2024 3D MI of more white flat flakes:

and sol 2018 3D or more "needles":

perhaps the "needles" are flat flakes seen edge on?

Ice needles? cool idea! But they would sublimate "quickly"? I will see if I can find earlier images of the "needle" areas. The pele's hair sounds more likely - but I will look.

Spirits roving grounds are below the 0 level of Mars (air pressure should be above 6 mbar) so ice needles or even water dont have to sublimate that quickly i guess...
ice needles would be a cool explanation for sure yes

Horton, Thanks for your continuing work on the soils at Gusev. I would sure like to see more of how all these various particles are arranged before disturbance. So far I think that the diverse types of material were mixed together to some extent before the rover's activities stirred them. There may be crude layering in the deposit but it is more a change with depth in the proportion of different grains rather than a stack of pure layers each with just one kind of particle. How would this come about? Is it plausible that hydro-thermal activity involving just dissolution and precipitation could produce these intimately mixed but chemically diverse independent grains. If these have been transported mechanically by another process it is hard to understand how they have remained so concentrated.

Joe Smith, Thanks for the enthusiasm. I like your question: "Can we dig a little hole here and watch it fill up?" It seems to be filling up quite quickly and I can easily imagine that if the rover ever vacates this hole it will become unrecognizable as disturbance in just a few Mars years. How consistent is this with the deposit being hundreds of millions of years old? Or maybe the hot springs stopped running just before Spirit arrived? Lucky or what? I think some scientists should be working on the "or what?" possibilities.

I wish someone would start a new thread The machine/software(that I'm using) prevents that,
NEW TOPIC
SPIRIT STATION,
soon we will have a new observation post at Troy.
On Mars.
Unless they can teach her to swim,,hmmm,,
to me it would as a programmer,a turn in place? Seems it would immediately bring the bottom pan higher?
Can anyone tell me(or care to) how fast the steering torus moves,and torque.
Surely this has been thought of.

The time frame of this mud hole soil moving is horrible.
On the other hand,WOW what fun! if you are a paddle wheeler,squirming,wiggling,,hmm,,rover
drivers need to look a LOT HARDER at the data
that is at their finger tips.
(OT)isn't there a permeability/time,factor here?,very low RPM wheel motors is another factor.It is not for me to say instead we should Move Ahead ie: Spirit/Troy
If not then,we have Spirit Station/Observatory.I would recommend finding new ways to evaluate /read/understand? data.
As long as there is an electronic heart beat.
As long as there is an "ack" then there is hope(inside joke)
PanCam,oh how I will love you,and while were at it lets get Dana some higher Z for her spideynetwork,how low can you go and at what rez.?
?
Edit I suppose:::
Spirit Station
Reference SOL:
Dir;/
Life goes on with it the hunger for more science,these could be some really rewarding days comeing agead,, ahead,,as for rasons Kye has mentioned..for me a few 24HOUR horticolour movies for sure,sure wish someone that knows something like,
re:cosistienct therof,,jello,hot peanut butter,an icey slush perhaps ,that is totally happy to be exdactally whatit is and
what we came a third of the way across the solar system to find?Study?comment on.

,,to the poster having trouble hit the reload or refresh occasionally.

Hope.
Joe in Texas

Here's a pair of forward hazcam images that shows changes to the disturbed soil over time:

Three curved dark bands have appeared in the second image in the foreground of the trench. They look a little like "contour lines" running mostly across the slope. I'm guessing that these lines have formed by slow gravity wasting of the slopes resulting in the sorting of particles by size and coincidentally by color.

Seems I posted very much in error and feel
very ashamed.Seems I get caught up in the very act of trying to communicate,
IE: ROVER DRIVERS
I would humbly ask considerable forgiveness
be given to say ANY thing derogatory toward RPL's??
The Guys at the Controls.We salute you.
YOU are our last link form Terra firma to
our Spirit and Opportunity,saying also that BOTH have been answered here.

Having both admitted the error of my ways,
and due shame at my communicative skills,
I will make this my last post tonight,here.
Adiue
Joe in Texas

sol 1899-2024 ( May 7 - Sep 12, 2009 ) R0 hazcam animation:

Lots of changes over 4 months - most caused by the rover or the regional dust storm.

Horton, Thanks for the hazcam animation, reply 16, which I flatter myself to think is a response to my primitive reply 14. In your animation I see the darker bands becoming more distinct over time. There are two partly parallel ones on either side of the trench in the foreground but they are often obscured by the shadow of the rover and the tool arm. The best example is the dark band crossing the slope facing the viewer in front of the RAT press and going around a near 90 degree corner where slopes meet. Your 3D pair of the rat press hill has been helpful. I think that colored bands are becoming more distinct in a number of places in the disturbed soil, the opposite effect that I would expect from dust accumulation.

I think the 3D aspect is important because where you have supplied us with the topography there seems to be a correlation between the new color bands and slope position, as if particles are somehow getting sorted like talus rocks that end up crudely placed by size - the bigger rocks further down the slope. Maybe size isn't the only factor here. Some of these particles could be denser or stickier or where they are falling from intact wall - sooner to let go.

In the few places where we have had MI images of intact soil, exposed but undisturbed, it is fascinating. I just went back to look at your 3D pairs from the sol 1997 MI images. There are particles of many different sizes, shapes, colors and textures all held together weakly by an irresolvable fuzz. Definitely Who Fever stuff for me, but I've also got a dark (and hopefully humorous) fantasy from another work of fiction:

Somewhere there is a Supreme Galactic Counsel document gathering dust on a Vogon military bureaucrat's desk. It authorizes the elimination of humanity. The SGC knows that we are TROUBLE from watching events on this planet. There's just one technicality of galactic law that's holding things up: We first have to kill a living entity on another planet. The law doesn't say anything about "deliberately" or how big or complex the entity has to be.

Maybe its too late already.

Yes, Kye, reply 17 was generated as a result of your reply 14 observations.

If you like, I will do a 3D hacam animation of just the trench. ( crossed eye and anaglyph versions? )

There are interesting changes near the bum wheel trench as well.

Phoenix used to hold soil in its scoop for a day or two to let it dry out and become less gloopy, then it could get it through the filters into the ovens. Perhaps the walls of the trench are collapsing because of a similar process where any briney moisture is sublimating and adhesion is being lost. I wonder when they pressed the RAT in to those two depressions were they looking to see if a similar process would take place?

If Spirit were not stuck here we would not be hanging around to see this, as they say every cloud has a silver lining.

Kevin to consider such processes we need more data like temperature and air pressure during the observation timeframe. As stated before: the average air pressure IN Gusev should be around 7 mbar (as of the MOLA altitude data). This means water wouldnt just sublimate during day but stay liquid (if temperatures go above freezing) and eventualy refreeze during night (ice needles?)... Of course it would evapurate slowly in such a scenario.