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Mystery Rock 'Appears' In Front of Mars Rover
astroengine writes "After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover Opportunity thought they'd seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously 'appeared' a few feet in front of the six wheeled rover a few days ago. News of the errant rock was announced by NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University at a special NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory '10 years of roving Mars' event at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night. The rock, about 'the size of a jelly doughnut' according to Squyres, is thought to have either come from a freak "flipping" event or a very recent meteorite impact. However, the latter isn't thought to be very likely. Although they are still working on the rock's origin, the rover team believe it was 'tiddlywinked' by Opportunity's broken wheel; as the rover was turning on the spot, the rock was kicked from place under the wheel and flipped a few feet away from the rover. Never missing a science opportunity, Squyres told Discovery News, 'It obligingly turned upside down, so we're seeing a side that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years and there it is for us to investigate. It's just a stroke of luck.'"
I bet it's a rock.
Yes -- luck that bored Martian teenagers don't have very good aim.
"we're seeing a side that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years"
You know that Martian soil - completely gas-tight. And you know Martian rocks - for billions of years, they stay completely motionless.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "rocket scientists"
Please help metamoderate.
It's a Horta of course. Doesn't anyone at the JPL watch Star Trek?
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Horta
...it's a SPACESHIP! The aliens come from a microplanet.
This rock could have been clattering around in the rover's hollow wheels for a long time, and just recently fallen out.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Does no one else notice the almost perfectly rectangular rocks with perfectly straight lines between them as though it was a set stone path or is it just my imagination???
The dirt above the rock looks a bit like a schnauzer with the face being in the very upper right.
Marvin did it!
I'm not saying Aliens.... but...
The air species that our inferior minds can't grasp the existence of let alone see is trolling us.
Looks like a dog poo to me.
It is an appearing hole. The shadows were obscured by the angle and as it rolled on top of the holes, it became more visible. Check the first video. The dark areas are there... They are just really thin because of the angle.
Nice try though.
Looks sort of like another Fallen Astronaut. Next thing we know, the Mars Rover will be postmarking some first day of issue stamped envelopes and then called home before the US Congress to testify.
It's an NSA spy rock.
But don't worry, it's only collecting data on US rovers.
That's what I would say too if I crashed while drunken roving...
That's what happens when you tell the rover to execute a burn out - sand and rocks fly everywhere!
OSCAR WILDE: ..... It was one of Whistler's.
Your Majesty, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
I beg your pardon?
OSCAR WILDE:
Um
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I didn't say that.
OSCAR WILDE:
You did, James, you did.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Whistler?
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I- I meant, Your Majesty, that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
This may have been by accident, but using the rover to flip a rock can also be done on purpose:
"Randy Lindemann knows all kinds of crazy stuff the rover can do. He describes using the rover to flip over a rock. You drive it over the rock so that the rock is between the two back wheels on one side. Then you drive all of the wheels backward except for that middle wheel, and as the middle wheel drags backward, its cleats catch the underside of the rock and flip it. If little Martian bugs crawl out, you win unlimited funding. "
Having performed my own photo-analysis, I would have to say that the purported rock was more akin to a cruller. Certainly, it is not like a jelly doughnut.
rock hopper. a piece of stone thrown up from its spot by frost/freezing and literaly cracked out and thrown away by contraction of surrounding rock. they occur all the time on earth and will therefore occur else where.
Which one of you guys put a rock 3D printer in front of the rover? Elon? Was that you?
Opportunity only brought scissors, not paper...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How can you tell it is upside down? Are there any other displaced rocks or pebbles or other marks that show its path? (What is different between these two panels?) Just wondering...
I know that the US has long resisted a shift to SI measurements, but since when does JPL measure things in jelly donuts?
On the side there is an arrow, and the text "This side up".
. . . it is the Pet Rock, I mean the very first ever Pet Rock sold, who stated publicly that it (?) was fed up with all the commercialism on the planet Earth and was going to take a trip to Mars......
I admit I considered the Pet Rock a bit farfetched at the time (I mean its (?) extremely sophisticated vocabulary and lexicon, as it (?) had only been in existence a short while back then?
Elon Musk put that rock there, as a prank.
Higher up the thread is a link to the Unmanned Space Flight forums, where there are some much better images. There are at least two rocks and some sand that have moved from one image to the next. Apparently this is on the uphill side of the rover, and the rocks may have rolled down from above.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This may be another example of where our geocentric understaning of landscape geology misleads us. Perchlorate-rich soil under carbon-dioxide rich low atmospheric pressure, thermal tides, carbon dioxide ice... What would happen if a bit of CO2 froze inside a rock or in a pocket beneath a stone and eventually got up to its sublimation temperature? Sometimes it would vaporize with enough force to pop the rock somewhere else. What if the perchlorate-water reaction that caused so much excitement with the Viking landers happened naturally due to condensed water vapor? Might that sometimes cause internal pressures within rocks and cause them to fragment?
"Oh, yes, I remember the years we spent rock-flipping on Mars... Haahahaha"
ignoring the warnings of their elders to remain unseen and stay away from the alien robot, martian children decided to have some fun. they threw the rock in front of the rover to see if it could successfully traverse the obstacle. next, they'll put a ramp and 12 school buses in front of the rover to see if it can make the jump.
The chances of a rock suddenly appearing are a million to one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or Martian's playing the childrens game Statue
You spin your wheels and throw rocks in my county, sonny, and you'll get a Careless and Reckless ticket! -- Buford T. Justice
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
why is everyone calling it a jelly donut? It has a hole like a regular donut. It must be the same mind control stopping us from realizing that aliens did this...
Eric
High sulphur could in theory be a waste product of HS metabolism; microbes are known to utilize this.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
... the jelly-donut sized rock landed jelly-side down.
The Doctor was bored.
It is a ring of Mars-gunk" that has been accumulating on Opportunity's wheel for some time now. It was flung off when something went ka-chunk. Happens every winter here in the midwest.
Two remarks on the photo. One is that the specific 5 sided shape of the rock is disturbingly similar to the crack feature it is resting on as seen in the "before" picture. second, the rock is white.
I assume the latter is why they think it's a "flipped over" rock. But the two observations together are remarkable.
But remember this lander is huge, like the size of a mini van, and has metal tires, so the prospect of it being able to kick rocks would seem to be very large
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
AwE130 reported 18 January 2014 it looks like an Anothesia? It is time for the truth there is life on Mars no doubt at all. http://www.awe130.com/index.php/the-latest-news/208 Dr Levin also confirmed that life on Mars was discovered in 1976. Wake up people. http://www.awe130.com/index.php/the-latest-news/226