Red Ice News

The Future is the Past

Odd Mars ’Flower’ & Snakelike Formation Spied By NASA’s Curiosity Rover
New to Red Ice? Start Here!

Odd Mars ’Flower’ & Snakelike Formation Spied By NASA’s Curiosity Rover

Source: huffingtonpost.com
New photos of Mars from NASA’s Curiosity rover have sparked a buzz of discussion over an odd formation that some have dubbed a "flower" embedded in a Martian rock. The rover has also found a snake-like rock formation winding across the Red Planet’s surface.

The so-called Mars "flower" photo was snapped on Dec. 19 by the microscope-like Mars Hand Lends Imager at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm. At the lower left of the image is a strange, apparently transparent formation that some Internet forum users on the website claimed looked much like a flower, according to NBCNews.com’s photoblog.

NASA posted a raw, unprocessed version of the photo online on the Curiosity rover’s mission website overseen by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Internet forum readers on the website Above Top Secret christened the object a flower, according to NBCNews.com’s Alan Boyle.

Curiosity has seen bits of clear plastic (pieces of the rover itself) on the surface of Mars before, but NASA officials said that doesn’t appear to be the case this time.

JPL spokesman Guy Webster told NBCNews.com that the object "appears to be part of the rock, not debris from the spacecraft."





On Friday (Jan. 4), NASA also unveiled a new panorama of Curiosity’s current location on Mars, a shallow depression called YellowknifeBayinside the vast Gale Crater. The image is a mosaic of photos that is dominated by a sinewy, snake-like rock winding across its center.

NASA scientists have dubbed the rock "Snake River." It is a thin curving line of dark rock that rises above the flatter rocks of its surroundings, making it an intriguing target for Curiosity’s instruments, JPL officials said.

"It’s one piece of the puzzle," rover mission project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement. "It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects."


The sinuous rock feature in the lower center of this mosaic of images recorded by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity is called "Snake River." Image taken Dec. 20, 2012.


[...]

Read the full article at: huffingtonpost.com

Comments

We're Hiring

We are looking for a professional video editor, animator and graphics expert that can join us full time to work on our video productions.

Apply

Help Out

Sign up for a membership to support Red Ice. If you want to help advance our efforts further, please:

Donate

Tips

Send us a news tip or a
Guest suggestion

Send Tip

Related News

NASA Curiosity Rover Unearths Building Blocks in 3-Billion-Year-Old Organic Matter on Mars
NASA Curiosity Rover Unearths Building Blocks in 3-Billion-Year-Old Organic Matter on Mars
Amazing Mars solar eclipse videos caught by Curiosity Rover
Amazing Mars solar eclipse videos caught by Curiosity Rover

Archives Pick

Red Ice T-Shirts

Red Ice Radio

3Fourteen

Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Kim Coulter - Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter
Gifts - Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter

TV

Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue

RSSYoutubeGoogle+iTunesSoundCloudStitcherTuneIn

Design by Henrik Palmgren © Red Ice Privacy Policy