With each passing day, those peppy robots on Mars - Spirit and Opportunity - churn out extraordinary new views of the red planet. Each robot is over a year in operation, relaying a steady stream of eye-catching photos.
And more than once, the Mars machinery has sent back an image that stirred up a promising eureka moment: Finding evidence for life on that remote world.
A case in point, during a recent run of Spirit in the Columbia Hills, the robot used its arm-mounted devices to poke and probe a select Mars rock. One piece of hardware -- the Rock Abrasion Tool, known better as the RAT -- is on hand to expose fresh martian rock.
The RAT utilizes a single diamond matrix wheel to scrape the rock surface. It does this ever so slightly and progressively to achieve a wanted depth. The abraded surface is actively swept clean by a brush to prepare it for scientific examinations.
Once the rock was worked over, Spirit's Microscopic Imager went in for close-up looks at the results.
And within the images, an odd feature could be seen, seemingly a pattern of something more biological than just rock.
No comments:
Post a Comment