More skip and slide rock trails:<a hre...

More skip and slide rock trails:

OK, I'm convinced. The rocket exhaust moved the rocks.

This image is just to the right of reply 44 and it has another rock at the very bottom of the image that has slide marks -- and one very clear example of a pebble that skipped multiple times away from the lander.

Since the rockets were pulsed ( on - off ) the lateral forces near the ground would not be uniform so a rock could be pushed in multiple directions as it moved. The soil on the sides of all the nearby large rocks and the clean surfaces under the lander shows that there was quite a bit of stuff flying around at the landing.

One curious observation: there is a subtle change in the soil color ( black to red )just above the largest rock. Perhaps this the effective "blast radius" of the exhaust where soil was disturbed? Remember, the HiRise image of Phoenix on the ground showed a soil darkening around the lander.