Opportunistic paddling into a damp Martian beach?

Briefly looking over on the raw images for the Opportunity Mars Rover:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...portunity.html

The tracks leading up to the sand trap that caught Opportunity to my
eyes are rather suggestive that Opportunity had moved over from an area
of 'dry sand' over into softer 'damp sand'.

See:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P0634L0M1.HTML
and notice the different depths of the left and right tracks.

There's also a suggestion of 'frost' in some of the tracks...

All wild conjecture on my part.

And to add a hint of 'conspiracy', the Mars Rovers site hasn't been
updated for quite a while now...


Regards,
Martin

--
---------- OS? What's that?! (Martin_285 on Mandriva)
- Martin - To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange.
- 53N 1W - Mandriva 10LE GNU Linux - An OS for Supercomputers & PCs
---------- http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en/concept.php3

In article ,
Martin 53N 1W wrote:
Briefly looking over on the raw images for the Opportunity Mars Rover:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...portunity.html

The tracks leading up to the sand trap that caught Opportunity to my
eyes are rather suggestive that Opportunity had moved over from an area
of 'dry sand' over into softer 'damp sand'.
[ ... ]

I'd think that with the ambient temperatures on Mars, damp sand would
also be frozen solid.

Perhaps it's been driving over frozen, damp sand and finally found
some dry sand...

And to add a hint of 'conspiracy', the Mars Rovers site hasn't been
updated for quite a while now...

Yes. Quite annoying.


Gary

--
Gary Heston
The Intel ASCI Red supercomputer placed first in the 11/97 list of
the top 500 supercomputers in the world, at 1.338 TeraFLOPs max.
As of 6/05, it wouldn't make the list.

Gary Heston wrote:
In article ,
Martin 53N 1W wrote:

Briefly looking over on the raw images for the Opportunity Mars Rover:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...portunity.html


The tracks leading up to the sand trap that caught Opportunity to my
eyes are rather suggestive that Opportunity had moved over from an area
of 'dry sand' over into softer 'damp sand'.

[ ... ]

I'd think that with the ambient temperatures on Mars, damp sand would
also be frozen solid.

Perhaps it's been driving over frozen, damp sand and finally found
some dry sand...

Yep, that's a better argument. In all this heat here at the moment, I'd
forgotten the low temps and low pressure for Mars.

Whatever, the 'sand' is different in some way for that region...


And to add a hint of 'conspiracy', the Mars Rovers site hasn't been
updated for quite a while now...

Yes. Quite annoying.

....And still no update. Are we due for a great "Revelation" update and
press opportunity? (Or are Deep Impact and the Shuttle stealing the show
for now?)


Regards,
Martin

--
---------- OS? What's that?! (Martin_285 on Mandriva)
- Martin - To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange.
- 53N 1W - Mandriva 10LE GNU Linux - An OS for Supercomputers & PCs
---------- http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en/concept.php3