For those of you that follow the movement of Opportunity, one of NASA's Mars rovers studying the surface of the Red planet, you may have noticed that it has stopped to smell the roses or, in this case, rocks. The rover has taken a break from its other investigative activities to closely examine some oddly shaped rocks that have never before been seen on the surface.
The Opportunity came across the outcrops of rocks while climbing an overlook to survey the "Marathon Valley," the current destination of the mission to conduct scientific observations based on spectrometer readings from orbit suggesting the exposure of clay minerals, which scientists believe are an indication of the ancient presence of water on the surface of Mars.
The rover team found that the rocks were so different from those previously examined that it was worth stopping to take a closer look.
"We drove to the edge of a plateau to look down in the valley, and we found these big, dark-gray blocks along the ridgeline," said Opportunity Project Scientist Matt Golombek. "We checked one and found its composition is different from any ever measured before on Mars. So, whoa! Let's study these more before moving on."
Analysis of the first rock in the site dubbed "Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau" using the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer instrument located at the end of the rover's arm found that it contained a relatively high concentration of both silicon and aluminum. The overall composition of the rock is a new discovery and hasn't been previously seen in other rocks examined by Opportunity or by Spirit.
The Spirit rover was active between 2004 and 2010 on the surface of Mars. Both the Spirit and its twin Opportunity were tasked with studying the surface of the planet as part of the Mars Exploration Program of NASA and were launched specifically to study the history of water on the planet.
The rover team has already set its eyes on another rock in the area for study dubbed "Sergeant Charles Floyd" to keep with the Lewis and Clark naming theme.
The team responsible for Opportunity has already uploaded a new version of the rover's flight software designed to use only six of the seven flash memory banks since the Opportunity began experiencing issues with the seventh memory bank some time ago. While the new software upload has been completed, before Opportunity can begin using the memory again a reformatting is required.
