You mean you didn't manage to get all your wheels dragged through slippery mud, or get sand sliding up and down your back for months at a time?
...
No wonder Percy hasn't proven the case for biology yet. It's too damned organic and sexy as it is. No witness tube can help the rover escape its own hot signal. That bot is living its best life!
You mean "notional path to the SSW", Paul, no?
STOP STOP I'M GETTING A NOSEBLEED
(OK, I know Opportunity was a lot higher up in elevation. But that's not a fair comparison - "Oppy" was born lucky and everybody knows it. The wind was always at that rover's back and it never had to land in a 1500 km-wide hole punched out of the highlands...)
Don't be all proud of yourself. The rover drivers will be given control of the death ray (sorry, the "breakdown laser spectrometer") when they summit the rim as a reward for their hard work. They'll be carving out the words, "We Persevered, ******s" into the finest basement rock any rover has ever tasted.
Beat that.
Oy. Less than 5 vertical m cleared after a whole week of short slippy drives. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find on this rim, but this terrain wasn't it.
EDITED TO ADD: I meant - only 5 m on this drive, after a whole week of slippy drives, with less than 10 vertical m cleared on any one drive. And this is hardly the softest-looking crater rim we've seen on Mars...
While I'm being chatty, I'd like to ask you if you have any suggestions re: contributions to this community or instance or whatever we call it. I often see things in the raw images that I feel like pointing out here. In reading social media since this mission started, though, I see vast knowledge gaps in people's understanding of basic geology (or "earth sciences", if we can use that term for Mars - maybe "environmental sciences" is a better term), and I sometimes feel I should try to shine a light in those gaps. I've thought about breaking down some of the big science papers/results from this mission here, but I wanted to ask you about this first, as I think you have a better feel than I for what people might be interested in actually reading.
You're talking sense, Paul. As you say, opinions certainly differ, especially among people of different scientific disciplines (e.g. meterology vs. geology), and that even extends to the mission PIs. Steve Squyres was certainly driven and focused in achieving his science goals, which meant that the MER missions drove hard as well. John Grotzinger was criticized for not connecting the dots and "lacking focus" on a big flagship rover. From everything I've seen and heard, Ken Farley is being more careful in balancing priorities (and I'd say his job is a lot harder here, considering the needs of sample return!) All that being said, even pure geologists will certainly disagree amongst themselves, though we don't see that here as interested members of the public.
I'm not privy to the inner workings on this project by any means - certainly not directly. Having observed prior missions from a somewhat closer perspective, however, I see Mars 2020 as very, very driven by the work of other missions and a surprisingly broad community. Orbital spectroscopy and geologic mapping has guided this rover in detail from the very start, to a degree greater than I remember even for MSL, and I'm not aware of much debate about the rover's planned route at any point since before landing. I was personally quite surprised by the short amount of time that Percy spent in Neretva Vallis (amazing place!), to say nothing of acquiring only one sample. Yes, there aren't many spots as interesting as Bright Angel along the traverse path, but I still don't agree that one sample was enough, and I somehow doubt that I'm alone in that opinion.
I've seen dust storms before - the largest ones, the global ones, even through backyard telescopes. If you're working right on the surface, they're not fun.
I'm not often surprised anymore by whitish or light-toned materials near a rover since Spirit uncovered all that whitish silica with its dragging dead front wheel, all those years ago. It seems we often find that Mars is red only until you literally scratch the surface.
I have to say that Percy often drives right past plenty of rocks I'd like to investigate more. I know that Ken Farley et al. are doing just that with remote sensing (the results of which we aren't privy to for quite a while), so they have some idea of what they're looking at, but I'm often tantalized by a lot of this stuff.
For God's sake, stop it with the conspiracy theories. Trace Gas Orbiter would absolutely not miss the, well, methane emission, from a single baby cow, let alone an adult specimen worthy of being prepared as wagyu. Everyone knows that a Japanese master chef would quit (or worse...) before disgracing himself thus. He would never abandon a thickly-marbled specimen on a great big windy crater rim like this.
This is Mars. If you want your vulgar gyudon, there's plenty of that on the mad blue planet next door. Martian wagyu should be part of the finest sukiyaki, to be eaten in formal dress, in deeply contemplative silence.
... I should add - if you can get a sample of this rock for us, we'll even let you eat part of it. It might be a bit salty, but you can be pretty sure Martian beef is nitrate-free...
The idea that this "zebra" or "bad camo" rock could be metamorphic is really something, an interpretation I didn't even seriously consider. If this is metamorphic, one would think at first glance that it isn't more of the same material we've sorta-detected on Mars already, which is probably the hydrothermal or shock metamorphic kind. Mars Guy considered metamorphic rock in his last video only to discard it...
Then again, the Nili plateau region just beyond the crater rim is supposed to be so damned old, even for Mars, that it could preserve evidence for all kinds of craziness, and I'm not sure we can rule out that this rock isn't impact ejecta from the plateau. Maybe this thing doesn't preserve evidence for something as Earth-like as plate tectonics, but that banding pattern needs a deeper look. It may not be a match for the neatly-striped metamorphic rock of Earth, but Martian metamorphism that may have occurred deep within the crust is something we shouldn't ignore. At the very least, I'd like Mars Guy's comparison of this rock to freaking dolomite to be put to the test. There's more evidence for plate tectonics on Mars than there is for that stuff!😅
Thanks for posting these. Do you prefer this JPL version of the overhead view to the contour-lined ESA one?