The clay minerals found by the observing spectrometer on a spot in Mars called Marathon Valley prompted the dispatch of Rover Opportunity by the Rover team to the location to conduct a survey. The rover was only 394 feet (120 meters) away from the valley when it found new kinds of rocks to be investigated.
The rover team on Earth halted their activities to perform an intensive investigation on the new rocks as these are unlike the other rocks found on Mars earlier, either by Opportunity or its twin, Spirit.
After researching the two rocks using the instrument called Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the tip of one of Opportunity's arms, the team was able to draw some conclusions.
The first rock has very high silicon and aluminum concentrations that makes the color bluer. The rock is then named Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau. Meanwhile, the second rock, named Sergeant Charles Floyd, has the purple light spectrum of the Charbonneau despite the gray color it gets when seen by normal human eyes.
The team also noticed that the first kind of rocks could likely be found on the high ridge. None of these rocks were found before, as the earlier rocks have different overall compositions.
The halted operation is about the attempt to reformat and reuse its original flash file system. Its flash memory has been problematic, which causes it be unable to recall some data it kept and requires computer resetting during its operation. At the moment, a flight software is used to keep its data as replacement for the flash memory that was uploaded somewhere during the discovery and research of the new rocks. However, the software is not designed to use the seventh bank of the flash memory, which is recognized as the area where the problem lies.
The activity will resume after the investigation of the rocks is completed.
