Thanks! They’re being thorough with SuperCam and the UV imager again, even if (I suspect) they don’t expect fluorescent minerals up here. I imagine this site will get the “full treatment”, as Mars Guy puts it.

This latest abrasion hole, with the fair-sized mineral grains it exposes, really makes me wonder about the dark massive rocks capping the hill, which Prof. Ruff tentatively identified as ignimbrites. Everyone came into this mission jazzed about sedimentary geology, but the volanic/igneous history of this place is proving to be pretty interesting, even mysterious.

EDITED an erroneous adjective.

Someone like you, who comes into a calm, science-oriented community with F-bombs and complete cluelessness, should be able to understand this:

I didn’t study geology or science for years to answer questions from the likes of you. You want a guide? F*** you, pay me.

No one owes you and your s***ty attitude a damned thing. Don’t presume that your talk about “getting interested in science” is fooling anybody or represents anyone else, nor does it make up for your entitlement. Paul Hammond and other volunteers here are doing an amazing job. You want better, do it yourself.

I don’t think we need users like Linktank around here.

Aside from the entitlement and total lack of self-awareness on display here, there are plenty of science-aware people who avoid social media precisely because of this kind of cretinous toxicity. I am inclined to increase my “engagement” here, and I’ve actually increased my scrutiny of this mission because of respectful and genuine questions I’ve seen online… but when I encounter aggressive BS like this, it doesn’t feel worthwhile.

The mission website and associated media can answer basic, er, “questions” like those above, but I actually do think there’s more of a need to connect the dots for those who want to actually get a feel for the seriously amazing work this mission is doing. To me Lemmy doesn’t seem to be the kind of place where a more detailed guide should be hosted, but I’m open to ideas for how it could be done. I’ve actually been working for a while on a few posts for this instance myself, but it’s a time-consuming process!

Your username works very well here 😁

They’ve already done an abrasion patch at the 1333 site, and given the mission’s emphasis on Pico Turquino, one would assume that they’re going to core here as well, but the rover team has been surprising me lately. I must say that the exposed interior we’re seeing on 1334 isn’t what I expected, but I’d like to see the night-time LED images before getting too caught up here.

Interesting! CacheCam isn’t used very often. Would dust on the lens impact operations significantly?

With all the apparent lithologic diversity and patches of flattish bedrock as we’ve gone higher and higher up the rim, I’d be more surprised if they hadn’t thought about coring. They’ve been shooting a lot more close-ups lately, that’s for sure, and not just on the “white rocks”. I assumed they were going to wait until reaching some accessible, heavy and stable boulder at Pico Turquino, and I still think they will. Nonetheless, it would be hard to miss the pretty distinct geologic units as we’ve sidled up to that hill, and erosion clearly has some interesting tales to tell around here. I definitely haven’t been able to complain about the rover climbing too fast and blowing past interesting stuff lately.

ZOMG

We’re actually backtracking!!! What have they done with Ken Farley - has he been kidnapped?? He’d never stand for actually going back and deviating from the Mission Plan…

One pill makes you larger

and one pill makes you small

and the ones that Mother gives you

Don’t do anything at all

When lost on another planet, our little green friend reminds us: Remember your training. Save you it can.

I’m not surprised that Mars Guy is going back to the textbook, so to speak, because we just don’t have experience with a geologic setting quite like this - the moderately well-preserved rim of a ~50 km-diameter impact crater - from prior Mars exploration or Apollo (Earth, of course, has done a lousy job of preserving craters of this size). The closest example is Opportunity’s exploration of Endeavour Crater, which is much smaller, with a far smoother, more degraded rim. Apollo 15 landed near the edge of the Apennine Mountains, formed by the immense Imbrium basin impact (~1100 km diameter), but the astronauts didn’t have the chance to ascend the foothills to any great height during their short and very busy stay. Opportunity had access to extensive outcroppings of bedrock at Endeavour, not to mention the kind of smooth, light-toned “paver stones” that Curiosity and Perseverance have been driving over for years. The Apollo astronauts saw nothing of the kind, unsurprisingly - the Moon being completely blanketed by that powdery surface.

Those other landing sites feature nothing quite like the distinct, boulder-studded knolls and ridges that Percy is investigating, which seem related to the original crater formation process itself. These gentle hills roughly follow the regional SW to NE trend of the rim mountain Percy is climbing (zoom in just a bit on the ESA map to see the steep face of the spur north of the rover), and several feature intact, massive blocks of bedrock that I’d love to sample (see Paul Hammond’s Pico Turquino post for the best example yet). Good episode by Mars Guy, and I can’t disagree with him here for the most part, but believe me, he isn’t laying the hardcore stuff on us yet: impact crater geology melts brains, not just rocks!

Correction: the image at bottom right was taken by one of the navigation cameras, which is located on the rover’s “head” or mast, unlike the body-mounted hazcams. The latest images include a couple of higher-res Mastcam-Z shots, so - more and better to come?

I’m afraid I can’t upvote this sentiment, Paul. I feel like we need to get you to, I don’t know, the Atacama? Utah, Kazakhstan, Western Australia? Nunavut, or the Dry Valleys? OK, all those places are a bit much on the oxygen and the humidity, and you wouldn’t be tasting the grit and dust in your mouth, but surely they could provide some respite to weary Martians? Dear planetary science community: remember the Paul Hammonds of this world as you work! We’re not mathematicians or pure theorists - planets fully engage the senses, and some people have been waiting a long time!

(TBH, I really go back and forth on the wisdom of sending astronauts ASAP, as certain incautious parties advocate. We should have done one sample return mission already - the easiest and arguably most relevant to astronaut safety was unwisely cancelled by NASA and has never been revisited, for reasons I can’t understand - and I long to get those cores from the Jezero basin back. I’d really give up a lot to have them, and I often think it’d be irresponsible to send people before we’ve assessed the toxicity of the regolith and dust. Still, the 1960s show me how important it is to have urgency, too. I’m assuming it was incredible fun to watch the entire lunar program evolve out of nothing, and even the Voyagers launched when they did to hit a deadline. I can’t imagine where this science would be without Apollo or Voyager!)

Are we really passing up all those tasty-textured boulders on the hill??

Come on, rover team! If you won’t give Percy the pleasure, send me! I’ll core those rocks for free. We really need astrogeologist boots on the ground…

Thanks for posting these. Do you prefer this JPL version of the overhead view to the contour-lined ESA one?

You mean you didn’t manage to get all your wheels dragged through slippery mud, or get sand sliding up and down your back for months at a time?

…

No wonder Percy hasn’t proven the case for biology yet. It’s too damned organic and sexy as it is. No witness tube can help the rover escape its own hot signal. That bot is living its best life!

You mean “notional path to the SSW”, Paul, no?

STOP STOP I’M GETTING A NOSEBLEED

(OK, I know Opportunity was a lot higher up in elevation. But that’s not a fair comparison - “Oppy” was born lucky and everybody knows it. The wind was always at that rover’s back and it never had to land in a 1500 km-wide hole punched out of the highlands…)

Don’t be all proud of yourself. The rover drivers will be given control of the death ray (sorry, the “breakdown laser spectrometer”) when they summit the rim as a reward for their hard work. They’ll be carving out the words, “We Persevered, ******s” into the finest basement rock any rover has ever tasted.

Beat that.

Oy. Less than 5 vertical m cleared after a whole week of short slippy drives. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find on this rim, but this terrain wasn’t it.

EDITED TO ADD: I meant - only 5 m on this drive, after a whole week of slippy drives, with less than 10 vertical m cleared on any one drive. And this is hardly the softest-looking crater rim we’ve seen on Mars…

While I’m being chatty, I’d like to ask you if you have any suggestions re: contributions to this community or instance or whatever we call it. I often see things in the raw images that I feel like pointing out here. In reading social media since this mission started, though, I see vast knowledge gaps in people’s understanding of basic geology (or “earth sciences”, if we can use that term for Mars - maybe “environmental sciences” is a better term), and I sometimes feel I should try to shine a light in those gaps. I’ve thought about breaking down some of the big science papers/results from this mission here, but I wanted to ask you about this first, as I think you have a better feel than I for what people might be interested in actually reading.

You’re talking sense, Paul. As you say, opinions certainly differ, especially among people of different scientific disciplines (e.g. meterology vs. geology), and that even extends to the mission PIs. Steve Squyres was certainly driven and focused in achieving his science goals, which meant that the MER missions drove hard as well. John Grotzinger was criticized for not connecting the dots and “lacking focus” on a big flagship rover. From everything I’ve seen and heard, Ken Farley is being more careful in balancing priorities (and I’d say his job is a lot harder here, considering the needs of sample return!) All that being said, even pure geologists will certainly disagree amongst themselves, though we don’t see that here as interested members of the public.

I’m not privy to the inner workings on this project by any means - certainly not directly. Having observed prior missions from a somewhat closer perspective, however, I see Mars 2020 as very, very driven by the work of other missions and a surprisingly broad community. Orbital spectroscopy and geologic mapping has guided this rover in detail from the very start, to a degree greater than I remember even for MSL, and I’m not aware of much debate about the rover’s planned route at any point since before landing. I was personally quite surprised by the short amount of time that Percy spent in Neretva Vallis (amazing place!), to say nothing of acquiring only one sample. Yes, there aren’t many spots as interesting as Bright Angel along the traverse path, but I still don’t agree that one sample was enough, and I somehow doubt that I’m alone in that opinion.