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."

Yes, rocks.

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Rocks are the precursor to water.

Re:Opportunity Rocks

[shabtai87]

They usually tell engineers to over-engineer, when in doubt, but props to these guys for taking it to the next level!

Re:Opportunity Rocks

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that it is very hard to beat space travel when it comes to a truly lopsided ratio between (cost of design + cost of shipping) on the one hand and cost of construction on the other.

In other news

[celtic_hackr]

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.

Intrusive Igneous

[Drache Kubisuro]

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.

Re:In other news

[red_blue_yellow]

It's not only very likely, it's guaranteed that it did not form in an eruption. The rock they are considering is basically a form of granite. You can find granites in a few places, but a very common place for them to form is in a magma chamber beneath a volcano. Those may stay hot for years, allowing the magma to cool very slowly and crystals to form.

So, I would say that there are a few things that could be interesting about this. First, our granites are typically micah, quartz, and feldspar (within the continents); I wonder what ones on Mars consist of? Second, this could possibly help us to understand a bit more about the history of plate tectonics on mars. As far as I know, evidence points to tectonic activity in the past, but it's not decided.