Opportunity Rover's Rocks and Minerals Discoveries At Meridiani Planum
Opportunity Rover found that the soil at Meridiani Planum was very similar to the soil at Gusev crater and Ares Vallis; however in many places at Meridiani the soil was covered with round, hard, gray spherules that were named “blueberries.” These blueberries were found to be composed almost entirely of the mineral hematite. It was decided that the spectra signal spotted from orbit by Mars Odyssey was produced by these spherules. After further study it was decided that the blueberries were concretions formed in the ground by water. Over time, these concretions weathered from what was overlying rock, and then became concentrated on the surface as a lag deposit. The concentration of spherules in bedrock could have produced the observed blueberry covering from the weathering of as little as one meter of rock. Most of the soil consisted of olivine basalt sands that did not come from the local rocks. The sand may have been transported from somewhere else.
|
Read more about this topic: Meridiani Planum
Famous quotes containing the words opportunity, rover, rocks and/or discoveries:
“Our inherent human charity and our religious beliefs will be taxed to the limit. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse.”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)