NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Grinds "Cool" Rock 70
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 Rocks (Score:3, Informative)
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 [wikimedia.org].
Re:Two rovers, one stuck (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, they are on the opposite sides of the planet [wikipedia.org]. I was thinking the same thing - maybe one could assist the other. But considering it takes about a year to go 3 miles, it doesn't seem very practical. There is a serious race against time, as the martian winter is soon approaching, which NASA feels will certainly end the life of Spirit.
Re:rock abrasion tool (Score:1, Informative)
it'll eventually lose its effective geometry, and its surface coating should wear out.
The bits basically self-sharpen as they wear (abrasive in matrix as opposed to a surface coating), but the abrasive pad wears away eventually. The bit is pictured on the lower left here [honeybeerobotics.com]. The little pads on the ends of the bit arms are the abrasive. Eventually, those little pads will be all used up.
Re:In other news (Score:3, Informative)
From the article:
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.
Note that they explicitly say that the rock did not cool on the surface, where it would have cooled quickly. Therefore, it's very likely that it did not come from an eruption of Olympus Mons.