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NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Grinds "Cool" Rock
coondoggie writes "While its sister rover Spirit has garnered most of the attention lately, NASA's other Mars traveler, Opportunity, is chewing up Martian dirt and unearthing the mineral and chemical makeup of the red planet. NASA scientists said this week the rover uncovered 'one of the coolest things Opportunity has found in a very long time:' a dark, basketball-sized rock known as 'Marquette Island.' According to NASA, the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated."
Opportunity is chewing up Martian dirt and unearthing the mineral and chemical makeup of the red planet.
Shouldn't that be "unmarsing"?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The Opportunity is a pretty awesome vehicle. It has outperformed its mission expectations by over 200% - it is in the fifth year of what was supposed to be a 90 sol mission. It takes pretty impressive panoramic pictures as well.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
We are all excited over rocks now? How about water on Mars? Something that shows that we would be able to sustain a colony on Mars? Rocks really *sigh*.
Rocks are the precursor to water.
Opportunity's rock abrasion tool - which was built by Honeybee Robotics Spacecraft Mechanisms -- was used to grind away some of the rock's surface and expose the interior. This was the 38th rock Opportunity has ground into, and one of the hardest, NASA stated.
Don't most/all abrasive tools wear out? Here's its description (linked from the TFA). It doesn't matter how "gently" it operates, it'll eventually lose its effective geometry, and its surface coating should wear out.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Cool.
How far apart are the two rovers?
chuck, and norris
ROUNDHOUSE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
question and how does this help human kind or do anything for my bills
Bringing to mind the pranksters role-playing the rovers as teen-aged girls on Livejournal, the mental image of OpportunityGrrl getting dirty and grinding against rock-hard.... excuse me, I'll be afk for a moment.
Here's a better article with a bigger picture and a bit more explanation, and here's a much bigger picture.
NASA uncovers volcanic rock on a planet with the Solar System's largest volcano (Mons Olympus). Scientists say it must have come from deep inside the planet and could not have formed on the surface. Scientists get all giddy. Film at 11. Call me crazy, but why didn't they just state it came from a volcanic eruption? And how do they know it's not a meteor? Why all the drama. Sure it's cool to find volcanic rocks, or any new kind of rock, especially on Mars, but why all the mystery and misdirection? Why can't science be cool just for science's sake? Ugh.
So if this is a coarse grained rock with a basalt composition, then I guess that means it is a Martian gabbro (on earth they tend to be used ornately as black "granite" countertops). Which is highly interesting because that may indicate crustal deformation. Here on earth, such rocks form deep in the ground in what we call plutons. These are pockets of magma that differentially crystallize into grabbros and granites. Plate tectonics nudges them to the surface and weathering + erosion helps to uncover them. The Sierra Nevadas is a continuous grouping of them called a Batholith. Yes, all that granodiorite use to be underfoot!
Anyhow, this could be important in perhaps proving that, yes, at one point, Mars had active plate tectonics. Planet formation kind of requires it but good to know Mars may have had some crazy earthquakes in the past uplifting such rocks to the surface.
-Drache Kubisuro
and its what makes people interested in science in the first place
its really not a problem to give voice to that wonder and amazement, what you call mystery and misdirection for some reason, in a popular press account. furthermore, science IS cool for science's sake. the issue is your definition of what science is. for some reason, you demand that science be stripped of everything but the most banal data
i'm getting a little sick of slashdotters complaining about hype in science journalism. its populist, which means it is not 100% technically accurate, it glosses over the issue and leaves important issues out, makes incredibly broad assumptions, injects some fantastic thinking into the whole endeavour... none of which are problems. desireable even
even if the reporter obviously doesn't have the greatest grasp fo the subject matter, the point that the information is out there and available to joe citizen is the most important thing. stop thinking lack of technical rigor and incompleteness is grouns to complain about the intersection of science and journalism. the intersection of science and jorunalism is messy: just fucking accept that already. its important to get the word out there, and if joe citizen is interested, he'll dig down and find out the crux of the matter itself
science journalism is just gloss folks, it is meant for mass consumption. stop fucking nitpicking it like it were an abstract in "nature" for fuck's sake
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hate when they give rocks and patches of dirt these grandiose names. You found a rock! It doesn't need a name. Sorry but I hate it.
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