TRACKS

I am surprised so little attention as been given to the tracks in this photo:

They appear inexplicable to me. Someone sggested they were made by berries having been dislodged by a nearby RAT operation. The tracks appear to be as wide as a berry, (widetr than a rolling sphere would make), and the pattern is impossible for an object just rolling about on a slope.

Another alluded to their being water droplets. While water might make such a pattern, what natural substrate would allow a droplet to move that distance? Very dry, very fine dust, perhaps. But then the question of the source????? And the temperature?????

Or am I imagining things?

No Curious.
I just think no one has an explanation to offer! I have studied this series of photos for over an hour and cannot come to a reasonable conclusion how it was created. Sometimes silence is golden.
Richard

Curious,

You're not imagining anything. The "tracks" in the dirt are just flat out weird.

/R

marsman

Curious,

However, I will offer one possible "source" for these "tracks" in the dirt:

[link]

V/R

marsman

How steep is the slope here?

I don't think it's likely that a piece of the airbag is in Endurance

I don't think thats a piece of air bag, for one. There is not much but round balls on the plains plus soft evaporates.
The martain rat left a trail. That dos'nt look like air bag either.

The rover is close, in the image above, wich is always, going to be a problem, Close enough to take an image of the ground, close enough to have caused a mark.

It also doesn't MOVE like a piece of rover air bag material. Since when does a piece of rover material wiggle a projection/appendage in front of a camera as shown in Reply 3? And... It has company as shown in Reply 6.

/R

marsman

Marsman
That is one of my favorite photos and to my knowledge has never been explained as well as this photo.

Richard

Thanks, Richard, and I definitely have to give you (and ustrax) credit for providing the post in Reply 6 from many months ago.

V/R

marsman

Some more thoughts on Reply 3.

Normally, when I see an object move in a "slight breeze" on Earth, the whole object moves (not just one part of it) such as leaves, sand, tree branches, etc. In Reply 3, the whole object does not move (or rock back and forth) in a "slight breeze" as described in the NASA/JPL article. Instead, only the projection (on the right) moves back and forth laterally (left to right and right to left). This is not the kind of movement that I would expect from a wind blown object. Also, the sand around the object does not move in a "slight breeze". And to make matters worse, because of Mars' thin atmosphere (1/150th of Earth), the "slight breeze" explanation from NASA/JPL is virtually inconsequential.

In other words, the "slight breeze" explanation in the NASA/JPL article doesn't make sense. The article further states that this object moved 15 feet from this location (in Reply 3) and went under the egress ramp. How could this possibly happen with a "slight breeze" given Mars' thin atmospheric conditions? With a tornado or a huge dust storm? If so, then why aren't the Rover's tracks filled up with dirt and sand?

In the same article, they admit to seeing yet another one of these "things" in 1997 by the Mars Pathfinder expedition that is similar to what is shown in Reply 6 and claim that it is "Kapton tape". "Kapton tape" is not "air bag material or something similar". So, once again, this explanation is not consistent and does not make sense to me. How can a piece of adhesive tape move from one location to another (let alone appear and then disappear in front of the camera)?

In one part of the article, it says that the object is "air bag material or something similar". In another part of the article, their experts say that it can't be "air bag material" because "it does not look blue enough to be the undyed nylon or red enough to be the dyed nylon". This explanation is inconsistent. It either is or isn't some "air bag material or something similar". It can't be both. Which is it then? However, the really big problem is that no inanimate piece of the rover or "air bag material" can move in the manner as shown in Reply 3 or as described (15 feet or more) in the NASA/JPL article in a "slight breeze" that is practically nonexistent.

IMO, the NASA/JPL explanation for this object as shown in Reply 3 is inconsistent, illogical, and unsatisfactory. Instead, the movement as shown in Reply 3 is the kind of movement that I would expect from some kind of highly mobile extremophile arthropod wiggling its eyestalk or antenna in front of the camera.

/R

marsman

richard in that photo are you referring to that wavy line in the sand? left bottom of pic, along the ledge?

Blito
No I was looking at the object in the right lower corner.
Richard

Stereo pair of the track.

There are some interesting things going on here. The L/R pair were taken 53 seconds apart, and there are numerous differences between the images. Most of them may be data transmisison related.

The most interesting to me is the small DARK diagonal smudge in the left image ( right eye in crossed eye viewing).

I don't see how it could be image processing related. Maybe a smudge on the right lens?

Unfortunately, the images are not full frame images, so It is not easy to compare the image to other recent right lens images.

But I'll give it a shot...

Do you mean this gully Richard?

Looks like a duck-of-the-gully type to me.

Hort
I was refering to the item in the lower right corner of the photo in reply 8 as being an unexplaned object.
R

Oh,that old thing!

Back to the nexplained tracks.

The "soil" in my yard is very sandy and dusty. If allowed to get very dry, when I sprinkle it withthe hose, small rivulets of water make very similar tracks on low slopes. If I don't flood the area, a tiny puddle will remain at the end of the track (a level spot) and very gradually wet a larger area - much as is seen in the photo. So I am tempted to suspect water made those tracks.

Except that there's not supposed to be free water on Mars' surface - and if there were, it would be frozen, right?

Wierd tracks!

If made by something else, where did that something go? It's not at the end of the track!

The interior temperature of the crater was measured at 40F, well above the melting point of water.

as to curiouses tracks...looks like they start from the bottom under the ledge head for another ledge then track up off the picture.

What's even more bizarre is that the "tracks" also take a very round-a-about path going up the incline of the depression and back down again. The "tracks" are also very narrow, constrained (having constant width) and curved.

We could suppose that a small round rock would do this. However, even if there were sufficient energy for a small rock to roll uphill, it would always end up at the bottom of the depression. So where is the small rock (with the same width of these tracks) at the bottom of this depression? I don't see it. The "tracks" path goes from one ledge overhang to another. Why would a small round rock do this?

If this were done by liquid water, then I would expect the width of the "tracks" to vary. However, the width of the "tracks" in Reply 0 do not vary. Liquid water would also pool at the bottom of the depression. There should be some evidence of salts from evaporation and precipitation at the bottom of this depression, but I don't see this either. If it did happen, then the evidence has been long covered up with sand from Martian dust storms. However, these "tracks" in the dirt look rather recent.

If I were to see Reply 0 in the desert in California, then I would have to conclude that the "tracks" were made by some small creature that went into the depression, went from one ledge overhang to another, and then went back out of the depression.

If someone could post a 3D image version of Reply 0, then that would be very helpful.

On the subject of liquid water..

This is the pressure and temperature envelope for pure liquid water on Mars:

[Link]

For a brine (a mixture of water and salts in solution), the freezing point can drop to as low as -60 C to as high as 15 degrees C with a Triple Point between 1 and 2 millibars of atmospheric pressure.

IMO, the answer is yes. There is free liquid water on the surface of Mars and this hypothesis can be verified by the detection of H20 and salts in the Martian soil. Unfortunately, the Rovers aren't equipped to do this. However, there is already a lot indirect evidence on the web and at this blog for this hypothesis from pictures of muddy Rover tracks, pictures of outflows from the Endurance crater, H20 and salts detected in the Martian soil from satellite and Viking Lander data, lakes photographed by the MGS, and so forth.

/R

marsman