File:Spirit Mars Silica April 20 2007.jpg
Spirit_Mars_Silica_April_20_2007.jpg (512 × 512 pixels, file size: 240 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
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Summary[edit]
Image: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has found a patch of bright-toned soil so rich in silica that scientists propose water must have been involved in concentrating it.
The silica-rich patch, informally named "Gertrude Weise" after a player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, was exposed when Spirit drove over it during the 1,150th Martian day, or sol, of Spirit's Mars surface mission (March 29, 2007). One of Spirit's six wheels no longer rotates, so it leaves a deep track as it drags through soil. Most patches of disturbed, bright soil that Spirit had investigated previously are rich in sulfur, but this one has very little sulfur and is about 90 percent silica.
Spirit's panoramic camera imaged the bright patch through various filters on Sol 1,158 (April 6). This approximately true-color image combines images taken through three different filters. The track of disturbed soil is roughly 20 centimeters (8 inches) wide.
Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer, which can assess a target's mineral composition from a distance, examined the Gertrude Weise patch on Sol 1,172 (April 20). The indications it found for silica in the overturned soil prompted a decision to drive Spirit close enough to touch the soil with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a chemical analyzer at the end of Spirit's robotic arm. The alpha particle X-ray spectrometer collected data about this target on sols 1,189 and 1,190 (May 8 and May 9) and produced the finding of approximately 90 percent silica.
Silica is silicon dioxide. On Earth, it commonly occurs as the crystalline mineral quartz and is the main ingredient in window glass. The Martian silica at Gertrude Weise is non-crystalline, with no detectable quartz.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/images/pia09403.html
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Spirit wheel digs into a silica horizon composed of ~90% SiO2
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 05:40, 22 May 2007 | 512 × 512 (240 KB) | DragonFire1024 (talk | contribs) | '''Image:''' NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has found a patch of bright-toned soil so rich in silica that scientists propose water must have been involved in concentrating it. The silica-rich patch, informally named "Gertrude Weise" after a player |
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Image title | IDL TIFF file |
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Width | 512 px |
Height | 512 px |
Compression scheme | Uncompressed |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Orientation | Normal |
Number of components | 3 |
Horizontal resolution | 100 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 100 dpi |
Data arrangement | chunky format |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows |
File change date and time | 08:12, 21 May 2007 |
Color space | Uncalibrated |