Mars Curiosity Rover Update

	Mars Curiosity Rover Update CURIOSITY ROVER UPDATE-- JPL (CP) Sanjeev Gupta Reporting @MarsCuriosity Sanjeev Gupta, MSL Science Planner: Hello, my name is Sanjeev Gupta and I am a long term planner for the Mars Curiosity rover. This is your Curiosity rover update. We've now been on Mars for almost 2 months and we have been witnessing the amazing new vistas of the never-before-seen Gale landscape taken with our wonderful cameras. However, much of the science team have had their eyes and the rover's eyes FIRMLY focused on the ground. Looking at the ground, the team have made an interesting discovery. On the drive from the Bradbury landing site to our current location we have been analyzing 3 interesting outcrops that are called Goulburn, Link, and Hottah. If we look at the Hottah outcrop, we can see a distinct layer that has been tilted and eroded and this allows us to look at a cross-section through the layer. When we looked at the layer with our high-resolution Mastcam camera we found that it was comprised of sand grains and small pebbles that had become cemented to form a hard layer. Here you can see a pebble that is 3 cm in diameter so smaller than a ping pong ball. This suggests that this layer is an ancient gravel deposit. The surprising thing is that when we looked at the pebbles closely, we discovered that many of them were quite well rounded. This is very different to the many angular clasts that litter the surface. Here, you can see a rounded pebble from a riverbed on Earth. On Earth rounded <b>...</b>	From: okrajoe Views: 0 0 ratings
	Time: 02:48	More in News & Politics

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