I think we have a natural ally for MSR here, Paul 😁

the Curiosity science team is after all the details at this time to assess whether water indeed was responsible for the more resistant nature of the ridges. Spotting one that is so clearly raised prominently above the landscape — and in easy reach of the rover, both from the distance but also from the path that leads up to it — was therefore very exciting.

That was just a nice little reminder: for everything we’re seeing up on this mountain, and learning about this planet, we’re still limited in what we can really investigate. And we are therefore biased in what we can discover right now. I really wonder how our view of this environment is being skewed by that. Even Earth geologists have this problem: so many of the rocks we want to sample are far underground, under the ocean, or only just barely exposed.

On Mars, though? So many things that the rover sees are still just out of reach, even with the lasers and telephoto lenses and other remote sensing instruments we’re packing. I wouldn’t trade this mission for anything, but we’re still not that far past the “scratching the surface” phase.

On these quiet sols, with minimal driving, have you ever suspected that the rover drivers secretly want to execute moves like this? The topography is maybe not a perfect match, of course, but with gravity reduced by 62%, I’m sure Percy could catch some air.

With Ingenuity grounded, there’d be no one to witness these moves, of course, but I’m absolutely certain the science team would eventually catch on when they see that the rover deck has inexplicably been shaken free of that loose sand cover one fine morning…

If I’m lining up my features right, it would appear they went SW or WSW, at least for part of the drive, not veering very far from the heading they initially took downrim.

I wondered if they would stick around at the last site and sniff what look to be more spherules a bit longer. They even took some night-time imagery of the things, and they don’t break out the LED that often, aside from the abrasion patches. From what little I know of impactite materials over on Luna, you’d really want to return more of these to Earth. I am really not sure we captured too many in Sample 29. They have some funky stories to tell, no doubt completely different from the ones that impact beads on Earth and Luna would tell you.

Any idea how to post YT content so that it shows the video thumbnail?

I found this Web utility, which seems to work. I’ll try that next time!

They haven’t sealed sample #29/Bell Island, no.

Was I correct in understanding they’re going to seal tubes only when they know they’ve got something sufficiently compelling? Until they’ve mapped the broad outlines of the rim and adjacent Nili Planum, I’m sure they won’t be sealing anything. At this point, with the hints they’ve disclosed recently, I’m not sure we properly understand the mineralogy of these lowest layers… well, I don’t, certainly.

Unfortunate that we can’t retain this small fragment when we gather the next core. We’d have two locations sampled in a single tube.

Also, you weren’t wrong about seeing the metallic glint from the bottom of the tube, as it turns out.

Did this short drive really take 1 hour? I know Percy can move faster than that, especially when Ken Farley is cracking the whip…

That wavy boundary on the left is certainly groovy.

Or should I say that the groovy boundary is wavy?

These rocks are so damned weak that even Mars couldn’t sew them up straight.

I hope I’m better at geology than poetry.

Ah yes, I saw that in pre-print. For a moment I thought this was the paper about the clay-rich/high-aluminum white rocks down in the crater, but yeah, this is some fundamental work by Kathir et al., with very nice figures to boot. This quote has me laughing right now:

The Noachian basement unit of the Jezero watershed unit is enriched in Fe/Mg-smectites, but we have found no float rocks with these compositions. This suggests that Fe/Mg-smectite-rich outcrops are friable, poorly lithified, and not well-cemented, and thus less resistant to erosion.

LOL You don’t say… now where have I seen rocks like that recently? 😆

For reference, the rover position on sol 1549 is just a few metres west of abrasion patch #38:

I’ve marked with a red “x” the four locations on the rim where we’ve failed to abrade or sample so far. (Sorry about the map quality, it’s a work in progress…)

Hmmm. Very nearly back to the site of abrasion patch #38, I see. I wondered if they would drive the rover to the nearest geologic contact, after seeing all the difficulty we’ve been having in the clay-bearing zone. Patch 38 fractured badly, too, but at least we were actually able to make the abrasion.

This mission really has seen a night and day difference since we summited the rim toward the end of 2024. I was taken aback last (Earth) year at seeing how quickly the science team was driving Percy up the inner rim, but now? The traverse map on the outer rim looks closer to the path a human geologist would take when learning a field site - learning the lay of the land, then back and forth, stopping for detailed work. And it’s summer here at the field site, too. After all that this rover has seen and done in 4 Earth years, I really wouldn’t have imagined how new and invigorating this crater rim campaign would be. So much to see, in such a small area…

Yep. I am smrt. (Thanks, Paul!)

Sol 1547 - They’re taking another poke at the outcrop, just centimetres away from the last target:

I’ll cheat, rather than taking the bet. 😁

The SHERLOC team usually takes two images of a target before abrading (the close-up at a ~5 cm standoff, the wide-angle at ~25 cm), which is what this shot (close-up) and this shot (wide-angle), taken on Sol 1545, appear to be.

On casual inspection, I don’t see much difference between this new possible target and the one that didn’t work out on 1544 (close-up here, wide-angle here), but… I’d really like to abrade this stuff, too. This clay-bearing unit we seem to be driving on makes a nice contrast with the failed abrasion site higher up on the rim, where the rock was actually too hard to abrade, and sure seems different from the almost rhythmic material down on the flat…

Still can’t believe we’ve been set free to rove on Nili Planum.

Aside from those already listed in the other post, there’s only one other patch for which I don’t have a given name (#34, Sol 1395), so that’s a total of four.

The drilling/abrasion tools on Curiosity and the MER twins have given us a good idea of the rock strength encountered by those rovers, but I haven’t seen much research on the subject for Percy as yet. It’s a little frustrating - that’s a stat I’d like to include when writing up the different patches, it really would help tell a story. I know the mission has enough “drill parameter” data to make an interesting tale…

From the blog:

Perseverance performed an initial toe-dip into this clay-bearing unit back in April, creating the Strong Island abrasion patch, before returning back upslope to Witch Hazel Hill to sample some spherule-bearing rocks. Since then, Perseverance has started exploring this clay-bearing unit more extensively, creating the Laknes abrasion on Sol 1526.

Allow me to add, for your viewing pleasure:

36 - Slants River
37 - Name not given - but my nickname for it is “Subtle Scales”
38 - Strong Island
39 - Hare Bay
40 - Name not given - let’s call this one “Frisky Freckles”
41 - Name not given - I’ll call it “Too-Creamy Coffee”
42 - Laknes

First of all, I have to say that this is a very thoughtful and useful reply. I’ve actually re-read it several times now, perhaps because it’s given me different ideas each time I’ve read through.

That Fujifilm link is one of the best justifications I have ever seen to keep an unreasonable number of browser tabs open, hahaha. Aside from realizing that I hate the “Provia” film simulation, there is a lot of meat there… in fact, everything you’re touching upon tells me that there is more room for experimentation/fooling around/creativity with our planetary imagery than even I had thought.

In planetary science, “experimenting with color” (OK, “multispectral data”) is a learned skill that is actually taught to undergrads nowadays, but it’s a lot more mathematical than what Fuji is talking about, and I’ve never heard anyone (instructors or students) talk about perception and such in the way you’re doing here. OK, so I may be extremely bad at art, but nobody can stop me from playing with landscape photos from Mars, and I think I’m going to start. That being said, I think what you’re saying should motivate actual visual artists to look at and reproduce their individual visions of this stuff a lot, lot more…

I’m as far from being an artist as you can get, but I like what you and supersquirrel are aiming at. As you know, I’ve been thinking about data visualization and presentation for these missions a fair bit recently. Personally, I find natural color images like this one from the curvilinear unit plenty spectacular and readable as is, but in general, a lot more work needs to be done to convey these missions to people.

If I’ve learned anything from supersquirrel’s point, it’s that we need to show multiple perspectives on the landscapes these rovers see. The missions have a natural tendency to do most of their imaging during the middle of the day, but that hazy dusty mid-day illumination is nothing like the sharp lighting that morning and evening shadows bring to the landscape. At the same time, I’m always worried about data/visual overload in these situations…

Interesting.

I’ve been looking at rover images for so long now (20+ years without any significant interruption) that I don’t even see “beige planet” anymore. It’s been long enough that I find non-geologist perspectives like yours kinda refreshing. I hope you don’t mind a couple of questions:

• Do images like the one below help with the appreciation part? It’s a montage from Perseverance of all the abrasion holes it’s made so far. No color processing whatsoever, no artistry, just the raw, sunlit, close-up images.

I’m showing this just so you can see the natural range of colors that get exposed once the ubiquitous red dust gets swept away. Still a lot of orangey-beige at first glance here, admittedly, but the tans, ruby reds and browns really pop in the full-res images.

• Older missions used to use false color images as well as natural color images - often to spectacular effect (see this false color vs. natural color pair from Opportunity). Do you find the false color images more palatable?

Serious questions here. I’m always wondering how science people can convey this stuff better to the broader public. I like your idea about the artists, that’s for sure.