Published December 3, 2004
| public
Journal Article
Evidence from Opportunity's Microscopic Imager for Water on Meridiani Planum
Abstract
The Microscopic Imager on the Opportunity rover analyzed textures of soils and rocks at Meridiani Planum at a scale of 31 micrometers per pixel. The uppermost millimeter of some soils is weakly cemented, whereas other soils show little evidence of cohesion. Rock outcrops are laminated on a millimeter scale; image mosaics of cross-stratification suggest that some sediments were deposited by flowing water. Vugs in some outcrop faces are probably molds formed by dissolution of relatively soluble minerals during diagenesis. Microscopic images support the hypothesis that hematite-rich spherules observed in outcrops and soils also formed diagenetically as concretions.
Additional Information
© 2004 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 15 September 2004; accepted 9 November 2004. The U.S. Geological Survey MER Team developed MI software and created various data products, including some of those displayed in this issue: B. Archinal, J. Barrett, K. Becker, T. Becker, D. Burr, D. Cook, D. Galuszka, T. Hare, A. Howington-Kraus, R. Kirk, E. Lee, B. Redding, M. Rosiek, D. Soltesz, B. Sucharski, T. Sucharski, and J. Torson (project engineer). The Ames MER team and M. Lemmon developed software to merge focal sections and generate anaglyphs from them. The MER Rover Planners provided excellent support of the MI investigation by commanding the instrument arm and MI dust cover. Reviews of this manuscript by J. Bishop, M. Chapman, J. Kargel, and an anonymous referee are much appreciated. This research was carried out for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 35000
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1105286
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20121022-095026700
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
-
2012-10-22Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)