SpecialSetOfSieves

Someone like you, who comes into a calm, science-oriented community with F-bombs and complete cluelessness, should be able to understand this:

I didn't study geology or science for years to answer questions from the likes of you. You want a guide? F*** you, pay me.

No one owes you and your s***ty attitude a damned thing. Don't presume that your talk about "getting interested in science" is fooling anybody or represents anyone else, nor does it make up for your entitlement. Paul Hammond and other volunteers here are doing an amazing job. You want better, do it yourself.

I don't think we need users like Linktank around here.

Aside from the entitlement and total lack of self-awareness on display here, there are plenty of science-aware people who avoid social media precisely because of this kind of cretinous toxicity. I am inclined to increase my "engagement" here, and I've actually increased my scrutiny of this mission because of respectful and genuine questions I've seen online... but when I encounter aggressive BS like this, it doesn't feel worthwhile.

The mission website and associated media can answer basic, er, "questions" like those above, but I actually do think there's more of a need to connect the dots for those who want to actually get a feel for the seriously amazing work this mission is doing. To me Lemmy doesn't seem to be the kind of place where a more detailed guide should be hosted, but I'm open to ideas for how it could be done. I've actually been working for a while on a few posts for this instance myself, but it's a time-consuming process!

Your username works very well here 😁

They've already done an abrasion patch at the 1333 site, and given the mission's emphasis on Pico Turquino, one would assume that they're going to core here as well, but the rover team has been surprising me lately. I must say that the exposed interior we're seeing on 1334 isn't what I expected, but I'd like to see the night-time LED images before getting too caught up here.

Interesting! CacheCam isn't used very often. Would dust on the lens impact operations significantly?

With all the apparent lithologic diversity and patches of flattish bedrock as we've gone higher and higher up the rim, I'd be more surprised if they hadn't thought about coring. They've been shooting a lot more close-ups lately, that's for sure, and not just on the "white rocks". I assumed they were going to wait until reaching some accessible, heavy and stable boulder at Pico Turquino, and I still think they will. Nonetheless, it would be hard to miss the pretty distinct geologic units as we've sidled up to that hill, and erosion clearly has some interesting tales to tell around here. I definitely haven't been able to complain about the rover climbing too fast and blowing past interesting stuff lately.

ZOMG

We're actually backtracking?!?! What have they done with Ken Farley - has he been kidnapped?? He'd never stand for actually going back and deviating from the Mission Plan...

One pill makes you larger

and one pill makes you small

and the ones that Mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

When lost on another planet, our little green friend reminds us: Remember your training. Save you it can.

I'm not surprised that Mars Guy is going back to the textbook, so to speak, because we just don't have experience with a geologic setting quite like this - the moderately well-preserved rim of a ~50 km-diameter impact crater - from prior Mars exploration or Apollo (Earth, of course, has done a lousy job of preserving craters of this size). The closest example is Opportunity's exploration of Endeavour Crater, which is much smaller, with a far smoother, more degraded rim. Apollo 15 landed near the edge of the Apennine Mountains, formed by the immense Imbrium basin impact (~1100 km diameter), but the astronauts didn't have the chance to ascend the foothills to any great height during their short and very busy stay. Opportunity had access to extensive outcroppings of bedrock at Endeavour, not to mention the kind of smooth, light-toned "paver stones" that Curiosity and Perseverance have been driving over for years. The Apollo astronauts saw nothing of the kind, unsurprisingly - the Moon being completely blanketed by that powdery surface.

Those other landing sites feature nothing quite like the distinct, boulder-studded knolls and ridges that Percy is investigating, which seem related to the original crater formation process itself. These gentle hills roughly follow the regional SW to NE trend of the rim mountain Percy is climbing (zoom in just a bit on the ESA map to see the steep face of the spur north of the rover), and several feature intact, massive blocks of bedrock that I'd love to sample (see Paul Hammond's Pico Turquino post for the best example yet). Good episode by Mars Guy, and I can't disagree with him here for the most part, but believe me, he isn't laying the hardcore stuff on us yet: impact crater geology melts brains, not just rocks!

Correction: the image at bottom right was taken by one of the navigation cameras, which is located on the rover's "head" or mast, unlike the body-mounted hazcams. The latest images include a couple of higher-res Mastcam-Z shots, so - more and better to come?

I'm afraid I can't upvote this sentiment, Paul. I feel like we need to get you to, I don't know, the Atacama? Utah, Kazakhstan, Western Australia? Nunavut, or the Dry Valleys? OK, all those places are a bit much on the oxygen and the humidity, and you wouldn't be tasting the grit and dust in your mouth, but surely they could provide some respite to weary Martians? Dear planetary science community: remember the Paul Hammonds of this world as you work! We're not mathematicians or pure theorists - planets fully engage the senses, and some people have been waiting a long time!

(TBH, I really go back and forth on the wisdom of sending astronauts ASAP, as certain incautious parties advocate. We should have done one sample return mission already - the easiest and arguably most relevant to astronaut safety was unwisely cancelled by NASA and has never been revisited, for reasons I can't understand - and I long to get those cores from the Jezero basin back. I'd really give up a lot to have them, and I often think it'd be irresponsible to send people before we've assessed the toxicity of the regolith and dust. Still, the 1960s show me how important it is to have urgency, too. I'm assuming it was incredible fun to watch the entire lunar program evolve out of nothing, and even the Voyagers launched when they did to hit a deadline. I can't imagine where this science would be without Apollo or Voyager!)

Are we really passing up all those tasty-textured boulders on the hill??

Come on, rover team! If you won't give Percy the pleasure, send me! I'll core those rocks for free. We really need astrogeologist boots on the ground...

Thanks for posting these. Do you prefer this JPL version of the overhead view to the contour-lined ESA one?