It looks like rocks and dust, right? Actually, it resembles the dusty parking lot near a beach where my family used to holiday when I was young — a sandy, ruddy, dusty patch devoid of grass where cars had worn down the top layer of dirt, exposing smoothed rock underneath. However, this isn’t a parking lot. Actually, scrub that, it IS a parking lot — Mars rover Curiosity’s parking lot in Aeolis Palus, a remarkably smooth plain inside Gale Crater on Mars.
“The Science Store had a parking lot.” Re: The wonderfully flat Curiosity landing zone inside Gale Crater.
#MSLa-eng.in/NtElto— Dr. Ian O’Neill (@astroengine) August 10, 2012
I don’t have an awful lot to say about these new high-resolution images that have just been uploaded to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission site except that I really wish I were a geologist! I get the feeling that these images from a never before seen region of Mars will keep geologists busy for some time to come.
As Curiosity undergoes a software upgrade preparing it for surface operations, we’ve been patiently waiting for the mission site to upload new images (beyond the color thumbnail teasers) of the surrounding area. And it seems that on Saturday night that happened. Here are some of my favorite views from Curiosity’s Mastcam:
I can’t wait for the day when I see bootprints in THIS dirt: a-eng.in/N6fnz3
#MSL#Curiosity— Dr. Ian O’Neill (@astroengine) August 12, 2012
astroengine.com 