NASA's Opportunity rover makes an interesting discovery
When NASA first sent the Mars rover Opportunity off on its mission never did they believe that the mission would last the long eight years that it has, or that they would discover as much as they have with the help of the Opportunity and its sister rover, Spirit.
The amazing thing is that those discoveries aren’t slowing down in the slightest even as NASA preps for follow-up trips to Mars. Recently, as Opportunity was cruising around the edge of the giant Endeavour crater, they noticed a bright vien of some light toned rock protruding through the rocky surface at a large rise called Cape York.
As you can see in the image above, the rocky vein is running horizontally and has been dubbed ‘Homestake’, and may prove to be the first hard evidence of phyllosilicates – the minerals that are formed in the presence of a watery environment.
“This is a real triumph of geology,” said Steve Squyres, Mars Exploration Rover principal investigator at Cornell University. “We saw these veins as we crossed from the Meridiani plains into the Noachian terrain back in August. We’ve kept those in mind as a very important thing we wanted to look at, but we were so focused on getting into the Noachian and new terrain that we made that the highest priority, figuring that we would get the veins later.
via Discovery
As Mars is heading into the winter months it is getting time for NASA to find a safe place for Opportunity to hole up for the winter and then hopefully come the Martian spring they will be able to send it back out on its voyage of discovery.
Related posts:
