In case you hadn’t noticed, January, 2014 has seen the celebration of the 10th anniversaries (Earth years!) of the landings of Spirit and Opportunity on Mars.
While Spirit finally got stuck in some sand in 2009, couldn’t maneuver to expose its solar array to the sun during the Martian winter, and apparently froze to death in 2010 because of it (warning, this is one of the greatest and saddest cartoons I’ve ever seen, it still makes me tear up), Opportunity is still going strong. Currently in the TENTH YEAR of its ninety-day mission.
NASA and JPL have been having seminars and talks about the two missions (catch them on NASA-TV or YouTube, well worth it) and revealed this week something bizarre even by the standards that we’ve already seen. No, not little-green-men class bizarre, but getting there.
Photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Arizona State University
Around Christmas (here on Earth) the photo on the left was taken by Opportunity, just part of a survey of what was in the immediate area after it had driven a few meters to a new spot.
On January 8th, in another routine survey picture, the white rock on the right is now seen.
The Opportunity scientists are referring to this new rock as being “like a jelly doughnut”, so I’m guessing that’s also a ballpark figure for its size as well as its looks. Even more surprising than its sudden appearance was the composition. It seems to have flipped over on arrival, so the orange surface crust is on the bottom with the interior white material being very high in sulfur, magnesium, and manganese.
The lead working theory as to how it got there seems to be that one of Opportunity’s wheels probably scraped a bigger rock when it was shifting around, fracturing the bigger rock and flipping this piece a few feet away. Opportunity does have one broken wheel that doesn’t turn any more, but instead gets dragged around like an anchor, so they’ll be taking more pictures in the upcoming weeks to test that theory and see if they can figure out where the jelly doughnut rock came from.
A less likely theory is that a meteor hit the surface somewhere nearby and threw up debris, including this piece. That seems pretty unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out yet.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists and Art Bell cultists believe that the Martians, who have been hiding just over the horizon for ten years, have begun chucking rocks at our equipment. Um, yeah…
Anyway, happy anniversary Opportunity! We’re glad to see that you’re soldiering on and continuing to commit science and surprise us.
And, FREE SPIRIT!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 