Spirit - Still Alive

It's been a while since I've had a peek through Spirit's eyes and not that the frenzied "butterfly life" of Phoenix is done ( or almost so ) I can spend more time here.

Still lots to to be seen.

sol 1683 ( Sep 27, 2008 ) vertical layer detail:

with a link to a location 3D.

Er, exactly how did this happen? What local geological forces can tilt a layered bed this way relative to close ( meters away ) flat beds?

Is it possible that the layers were created standing up?

Another puzzle:

sol 1692 ( Oct 6, 2008 ) super resulution of broken rock:

broken by the rover?

What's the "stuff" on the fracture on the left hand side of the rock? Internal inclusions revealed by the fracture? Mineral coating after the fracture?

The top of the rock has multiple lighter coatings of minerals.

If this were an Earth rock then what would be a good guess about it's origin and composition?

Thanks for the hard work Hort, an inspiration to Marsaholics everywhere.

I did run across an interesting image from the Spirit Rover. Maybe someone did post it, if not here it is. Phobos and Deimos passing over head in the night. This image was taken by Spirit.

Now if you can get past the distraction of the two moons passing by you can see some high level moisture or dust reflecting a few reflected photons. The first clouds of any kind I have seen at this site.

Fred

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/2990011828_c0c0814a09_o.gif

Hort; If the "apparent" dip is in fact "true" dip, then the beds may be adjacent to a fault and are displaying drag associated with movement along the fault.
(not unusual)

The fracture coating is probably secondary and the rock appears to be just another chunk of the surrounding layered beds.

Ben,

Us novice liken faults with tectonics. Tell us all about it brother.

Fred

Fred; In this case I doubt tectonics is involved ,rather the movement is related to subsidence around the periphery of the "maar" like Home Plate beds.
( not uncommon on earth)

Spirit in peril. Either Mars weather has gone to hell in a hand basket or NASA is out of money. *see financial crisis.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/11/11/Dust_storm_threatens_Mars_rover_Spirit/UPI-87921226422742/

Looks like the storm is calming down but that normally means large quantities of dust falling back to Mars and onto the solar panels. Tricky times for Spirit:

[link]

sol 1729 ( Nov 13, 2008 ) :

still with us.

sol 1435-1772 animation of cleaning event?:

Woo Hoo!

Looks like Spirit has had a Spring cleaning.

( First pointed out by OWW on UMSF. )

I used the 12 bit original data for the 1435 image and did a manual scaled rotation alignment so that do you can compare changes in some detail.

Fred; You are the expert on wind . Was this a DD or just straight wind ??

sol 1782 ( Jan 7, 2009 ) move off the side of homeplate:

Perhaps it is time to create a new topic? The spirit moves Spirit?

Some "creepy" dust movement on the deck over 2 months:

The movement of the dark stuff is definitely weird.

Notice the fuzzy shadows on sol 1725.

Northern edge of homeplate from the Cornell Bonesell panorama:

Hort, regarding Reply 11:
Your animation of the image below your caption "The movement of the dark stuff is definitely weird." shows something larger than dust scooting across the panel. Look at the bottom middle of that image animation and you can see what looks a berry or something scooting along one of the panels.

sol 1786 ( Jan 11, 2009 ) 3D super-resolution L26_16R12 of interesting rocks on Mitcheltree Ridge east of homeplate:

with link to 3X view of extra interesing rocks.

The left eye ( right image ) blue channel is the sharpened average of 16 L6 images.

Hope Cornell releases their Superres version "soon". ( The last Spirit Superres released was April, 2008 )

rpage, apparently even pointing out these features is enough to be "warned" to "not go there" by the Dictator for life of Unmannedspaceflight.com.. I am done with him. I asked that my account be deleted.

Oh well. It's his ball.

Hort;Your pointing out the basalt boulders on MR is interesting in that I have been looking at the distribution of these rocks in the area and they appear to be concentrated on "ridge' areas and there are very few on HP.
First off, I don't know where the basalt came from, be it an eroded flow or ejected material , but the few chunks on HP suggest HP is a later feature.
The basalt concentrations on the ridges may indicate they formed an armor like protection that reduced erosion of these localities.

apparently even pointing out these features is enough to be "warned" to "not go there"......Why? There is a thread "confessions of a banned unmanned spaceflight member" here too. What is the problem over there?????

I am a banned "Unmanned spaceflight.com member" too....Posted a couple of Rosetta/steins images.....

My subject is why I should transform this image....

Into this....An impossibility at any rate...
http://marsesa.9f.com/slide_shows/Steins_View_C/Steins305FH-4.png

(May have to copy and paste links)

sol 1784 ( Jan 9, 2009 ) R0 1x6 panorama after move off the side of homeplate:

with links to 5 L257 details.

Great images Hort. They show the basal part of the exposed HP sequence which looks to me like an agglomerate of volcanic ejecta.
Have we seen these rocks close-up to determine what those pebbles and fragments are?

sol 1793 move:

Headed towards the sol 768 "on-ramp" and a clockwise navigation to the "off-ramp" to Von Braun?:

with a 3D infrared / visible view of the dust on the deck and sundial.

How many different types of dust can you see?

The ir-green / red dust on the sundial is quite different than the usual ir-brown / brown dust. Some silly-ka?