Mars Sphinx: Rover Opportunity Working At 'Matijevic Hill' Photographs Unusual Rocks

 

The team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plans to investigate rocks in this area photographed by the rover’s navigation camera during the 3,057th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity’s work on Mars (Aug. 23, 2012). Both the dark fins and the paler outcrop beyond them hold potential targets for studying with instruments on the rover. 

Credit:  NASA/JPL-Caltech

The “blueberries” found earlier are concretions formed by the action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, but that is only one of the ways nature can make small, rounded particles. One working hypothesis, out of several, is that the new-found spherules are also concretions but with a different composition. Others include that they may be accretionary lapilli formed in volcanic ash eruptions, impact spherules formed in impact events, or devitrification spherules resulting from formation of crystals from formerly melted material. There are other possibilities, too.

 

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its rock abrasion tool on a rock informally named “Gagarin” during the 401st and 402nd Martian days, or sols, of the rover’s work on Mars (March 10 and 11, 2005). This false-color image shows the circular mark created where the tool exposed the interior of the rock Gagarin at a target called “Yuri.” The circle is about 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches) in diameter. Gagarin is at the edge of a highly eroded, small crater that was informally named “Vostok” for the spacecraft that carried Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in the first human spaceflight, on April 12, 1961. 

This image combines exposures taken through three different filters by Opportunity’s panoramic camera on Sol 405 (March 14, 2005). The view is presented in false color to emphasize differences among materials in the rocks and the soils. 

Images showing the context for the location of Vostok crater and spherules are athttp://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07193 andhttp://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07471.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ASU

“Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed,” said Opportunity’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. “Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations.”

The team chose to refer to this important site as Matijevic Hill in honor of Jacob Matijevic (1947-2012), who led the engineering team for the twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity for several years before and after their landings. He worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., from 1981 until his death last month, most recently as chief engineer for surface operations systems of NASA’s third-generation Mars rover, Curiosity. In the 1990s, he led the engineering team for the first Mars rover, Sojourner.

A different Mars rover team, operating Curiosity, has also named a feature for Matijevic: a rock that Curiosity recently investigated about halfway around the planet from Matijevic Hill.

“We wouldn’t have gotten to Matijevic Hill, eight-and-a-half years after Opportunity’s landing, without Jake Matijevic,” Squyres said.

Opportunity’s project manager, John Callas, of JPL, said, “If there is one person who represents the heart and soul of all three generations of Mars rovers — Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity — it was Jake.”

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Opportunity, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov .

Contacts and sources:
Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.