Mars Rover Finds Unusual Rocks at 'Home Plate'

An anonymous reader writes "After several months of driving nearly a kilometer, the Mars Rover Spirit has reached the semicircular plateau dubbed 'Home Plate' in Gusev Crater and has unearthed a puzzle. Spirit first got a good view of Home Plate in late August from 'Husband Hill'. The layered appearance is unlike anything yet seen by the rovers."

Sediment?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'm no geologist, by those layered rocks look like some kind of sendiment formation to me. Which would make sense if mars had water bodies of some kind.

Then again they could just be volcanic rocks.

Can any of Slashdot's resident geologists solve this mystery in three of less posts?

Re:Late Breaking News:

[dreemernj]

Maybe someday these can all be compiled onto a website...and that site will be posted as a story on /. ...and nobody will be able to read it...because the server will have died...

Looks like sedimentary rock to me.

[TheZorch]

ObsessiveMathsFreak has it right. That is fossilized sedimentary rock. You can find it all over places like China where several feathered dinosaurs were found recently directly linking dinos with birds.

Anyway, if there is at all a chance of proving that Mars might have once harbored life THIS IS THE PLACE to look. Because its within sedimentary rock that you find the greatest proliferation of fossils. Any self-respecting paleo-geek can tell you that.

Re:Sediment?

[DisownedSky]

I'm not a geologist either, althoug I have been following the discussion at Unmanned Spaceflight [unmannedspaceflight.com]. There are as many hypotheses as hypothesizers. When you have that many thin layers with significant cross-lamination, then it seems to me to point to deposition by wind or water. It can't just be slabs of lava. Of course, everyone is hoping that water will be the answer.

In some of the images from late last week [nasa.gov], there appears to be a spherule, not unlike the ones foundon the other side of the planet by Opportunity. The ones Opportunity found are mostly made of hematite and are thought to be associated with liquid water.

Re:Looks like sedimentary rock to me.

[gEvil (beta)]

I disagree. While the rocks do have the appearance of a striated laminate, there are enough layer thickness inconsistences visible over very short distances that this may not be the case. You can get similar visible features from magma and volcanic flows. Also, some very serious uplift and tilting has occurred (the layers are visible along a horizontal surface) At this point, it's difficult to even pinpoint it down to which of the three major rock types it is (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) without chemical and microscopic analysis. You certainly can't tell from a series of black and white pictures. Which is exactly why there's debate about this among even the experts.

Re:Keeps going, and going, and going...

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Actually, I think they just dramatically underestimated their performance and life cycle.

Lets face it, Nasa hasn't had a lot of success as of late. If they sent a couple of rovers to Mars and suggested they would last 3 years, and then they died 2 days into the mission, it would be egg on Nasa's face. Instead, they said the rovers had a 3 month life expectancy, and everyone is slapping Nasa on the back after 2 years into the mission. I think Nasa purposely make the 3 months comment just to reap the benefits of finally having a successful mission to mars.

Nasa over designs things, so I was dubious when they said the Mars rovers would only last 3 months. Barring any significant dust or wind storms, there is no reason why the rovers should not have lasted this long if they are solar powered and reasonably well engineered.

What is unbelievable is that Nasa designed something that didn't f*ck up in the first 3 months, or even on landing. But I would take the whole "only designed for a 3 month mission" with a big spoon full of sugar, internally the rovers were probably designed to last a decade. Your car would last a century if some company put 800+ million into creating it, I would expect the same from a couple of 400 million dollar platforms with wheels on them. Remember, the mars rovers we over budget and delayed, so lowering expectations is Nasa's typical method for covering up budget overruns and delays. Once something demonstrates apparently unexpected success, everybody forgets about the price tag.

What if...?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may only be a nifty geological find but what if...

What if the rovers did come across something which was undeniably manufactured. Say the rovers happened upon a rock with a sheet of bent and rusted steel laying against it. What if the robot caught a picture of what would look like a circuit board or some motorized assembly. What then? Would we be seeing pictures of it right away? In a day? In a month? In a year?

What if the evidence began stacking up that there had been a civilization on Mars but it wiped itself out because its politicians were too stubborn and bull-headed to admit when they've royally screwed up. The compounded mistakes upon mistakes upon denials upon coverups resulted in a nuclear-type holocaust which decimated the entire plant. Would we be shown that material?

Undoubtedly the most interesting of finds from the two faithful rovers will never be known to the vast majority of us sitting here gawking at some Martian shale.

Re:What if...?

[Lijemo]

I once herd a NASA scientist give a response to such views.

His point was this: Like any other agency, NASA's biggest problem is the limited funding. If they released pictures that indicated something created by intelligent beings and asked to investigate further, the money would pour in. Thus they would have NO motiviation to keep such a find secret, and EVERY motivation to share it. Such a find would end their finantial difficulties for a very long time.

(After all, it's not like some unauthorized person is going to rush to the archaeological site to loot it or mess it up...)