Two sols have passed, and the coring drill is still embedded inside the rock…

I’m assuming this isn’t intentional. Paul, do you recall something like this ever happening before? If the rover encountered some kind of fault, it makes sense that they would leave everything where it is and assess the problem before acting.

Not onboard the rover, no - which is one of the reasons many hardcore types are obsessed with sample return, in spite of the cost and extreme technical difficulty.

A number of age estimates for stuff in this area (the Jezero crater itself, the old mudstone down in the river delta we sampled last year, and so on) put them at easily 3.5 billion years plus - possibly older. That means the samples Perseverance already has in hand could be just as old as, or even older than, the most ancient sedimentary rock we’ve found on Earth. I get chills thinking about it.

Always so strange and wonderful to see how these objects, entirely free of atmosphere or storm, can have such a “soft” look - with craters seemingly buried under a layer of snow or paste, or something. I wonder if that would be that be due to the phenomenon of regolith moving via “seismic shaking”, which is supposed to partially bury smaller features in these asteroid landscapes. Even these preliminary images have enough detail and apparent features to beguile the eye.

DJ definitely doesn’t appear as “soft” as Deimos or Atlas (out by Saturn), but those two moons are quite a bit larger than this inner main belt asteroid. A lovely reminder that there’s a lot to see in the Belt.

We do these abrasions on the rocks before we start analyzing them in detail with the science instruments.

The geologists prefer not to analyze the raw, eroded outer surfaces of rocks - they tend to be covered in dust and sand, and they’ve been eaten away by the wind, or even (over long timescales) the minor amounts of humidity in the Martian atmosphere. By grinding away the outer surface, the fresh, unaltered interior of the rock is exposed.

The instruments then let you learn what minerals and other materials are in the rock, hopefully allowing us to ID what we’re looking at. If the instruments turn up interesting results, the science team may decide to take a sample of the rock for eventual return to Earth.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask if I wasn’t clear about something.

If you will pardon the late reply:

From what I can see, the colour image featured in this post is not vertical - it’s actually a close-up image from the microscope on the end of the rover’s robotic arm, which you can see placed over the target in this image, taken less than an hour after the microscopic image. The slope on which this rock/outcrop is found is well below 45º, or the rover’s wheels wouldn’t be resting on it. You can see a wider view of the rock adjacent to the target in this image from the same sol (if you’re interested, here are all the images taken on sol 4513).

That being said, your question is pertinent. Yes, I would call them layers also. There has clearly been deposition here - a lot of it - but erosion has shaped the landscape here in interesting ways too (this latter image was also taken on 4513).

The thing about folding is that it doesn’t occur in insolation, or only in very small areas; it’s generally a response to forces that act on regional scales. If there were folding at the rover’s current location, it would likely be visible in the surrounding countryside, including possibly on the towering layered ridges that now surround the rover.

Even for geologists, this field site makes you think.

I just want to make sure I understand what/how you’re seeing this, I hope you don’t mind:

When you say you’re seeing vertical structure, are you talking about those protruding (and rather phallic) parts in the upper half of the image?

EDITED TO ADD image with relevant features outlined in yellow:

And in today’s episode of pareidolia…

Zooming out from the patch:

• Target rock close-up: before abrading
• Medium close-up (~15 cm across)
• View of the outcrop
• Outcrop with rover in FOV
• Outcrop and rover - wider context

SECOND TRYSIES ! !

Nothing makes me more excited on this mission than going backward. Something must be pretty important all the way up there, 11 m higher up!

It wasn’t even a trip into orbit. Their rather short voyage was a sub-orbital hop. A low orbit of Earth requires a speed on the order of 8 km per second - Blue Origin can make about Mach 3, from what I read, which is circa 1 km per second. You go up, you go down. That’s it. They don’t even go particularly high (~100 km), and the apogee doesn’t keep you “above the atmosphere” (LOL) for long. Given the risks, I’m not sure it’s worth it, personally.

If we really want to inspire people by pointing out women’s accomplishments in spaceflight and space exploration, maybe we should be talking about people like Eileen Collins (astronaut on key shuttle/station missions), Lindy Elkin-Stanton (science lead for Psyche, the first to a metallic asteroid), Maria Zuber (lead the GRAIL mission to the Moon, co-discovered the rifts in the Ocean of Storms), or Mimi Aung (lead engineer for the Ingenuity 'copter on Mars 2020). And I’ve only mentioned a few Americans with recent work here; the rest of the world has plenty of enterprising female space scientists and aerospace engineers.

I share the general distaste in this thread and on Lemmy generally for this sort of celebrity stunt, and I’m glad to see the criticism. I do sometimes think, however, that for a certain kind of person, Bezos and Musk are becoming associated or even synonymous with spaceflight/exploration generally, which is a dangerous association to make. People have many, diverse and very legitimate reasons for going to space - there’s a lot more going on than joyrides and ego trips.

The colour of the tool?

You are a gentleman and a scholar, Paul, thank you. Much credit to Fernando Nogal, as well. My PC is having a mid-life crisis, so I haven’t been able to look at that orbital map file yet, but this is all inspiring to see. I am very much looking forward to UMSF being reconstituted.

Would you mind if I sent you a DM? I wanted to ask your opinion about writing “guides” of a somewhat similar kind.

It even works most of the time - pretty much all the time, actually. We’ve only failed twice so far, out of… something like 70 attempts, I believe. And only because those two rock targets were too hard.

You’re right, it’s impressive. Come to think of it, though, Spirit and Opportunity used to do this too, and Curiosity’s still at it, so we’ve actually been at this for twenty years now. Yeah, it’s been a ride.

I am definitely interested, Paul! I love me a drowning in data! Hit me!

Excellent episode. Even if hadn’t prominently featured power tools!

Anyone who wants to understand the purpose and process of making abrasion patches (e.g. #37, made about three weeks ago), should watch this short video.

Thanks for posting this, Paul; I had meant to go through this year’s abstracts more closely, so this saves me some time!

The image, aside from being spectacular and essential for visualizing this mission’s progress, is one of those key diagrams that needs to be on a regularly-maintained “reference page” somewhere.

Personally, I’m fond of this recent shot of finely-banded material, or this interesting whitish-looking find, but… the wisdom of crowds, I guess.

There is just so much to see around here…

Question(s) for Paul Hammond:
Do you keep any rock specimens, personally? Would you find vesicular basalt to be charismatic enough to earn a place as one of your pet rocks? I see that you like these “shiny” or “polished” cobbles we’ve been seeing all mission long… I think… but we don’t often analyze them in this much detail.

AHHH the suspense! Come on relay network, send us the next ones ASAP! I know those sats are busy too, but this wait is killing me.

I really wasn’t sure we’d abrade here. I mean, we skip past funky-looking darker caprock all the time (for months at a time when Ken Farley is in a hurry)! Even when the rover can physically reach it. Just look at this stuff, it’s craggy and lumpy as anything… but that flattish patch they’re grinding: yes.

Even with all the evidence for volcanic deposits around here, I honestly wouldn’t guess what this abrasion patch might show us. Volcaniclastic rocks like tuff aren’t the hardest for sure, but this stuff forms the resistant layer here. We focus a lot on sampling with this mission, understandably, but I’d love to read more about the science team’s deliberations over whether we do (or don’t) stop and abrade stuff. We always abrade before we take a sample, so abrasions are just as important as samples in a lot of ways…

Apologies for the word salad. Paul Hammond knows my pain.

Judging by the rocks Percy has been viewing in the last few sols, this hillside has seen quite a bit of hot/volcanic material falling from the sky, and not just from a single asteroid impact either. The geology here is captivating.