12 Things Curiosity Forgot to Inspect & Some Concerns About NASA's Information Policy

Here's your chance to ask the Curiosity team about all those "anomalies" and targets that should have been investigated, and all your other questions.

The MSL team will be doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, July 30, 2013 at 10:30 AM EST (15:30 GMT), in this subreddit: www.reddit.com...
Curiosity Rover subreddit (subforum) at Reddit:
www.reddit.com...

They didn't go to the moon, they pocketed the money,

They didn't go to mars, they pocketed the money.

It's just another con job. They use it as a basis to syphon off billions of dollars, under the illusion of this cheap movie they record in the desert somewhere. It's just more smoke n mirrors I'm sure.

Originally posted by MarioOnTheFly
I don't like "all I see is rocks" people...even if they are right...it shows a clear lack of imagination.

Imagination and this forum should not mix, there's too much imagination on here!

One of the "anomalies" ATSers pointed out was a flat square-looking "metal sheet". Here's a similar formation from a recent shot at Shaler outcrop: mars.jpl.nasa.gov...



It's quite clearly a natural formation, probably a layer of sediment exposed through wind erosion.

Here's the full mosaic by Impreprex: Link

Originally posted by wildespace

 

Here's your chance to ask the Curiosity team about all those "anomalies" and targets that should have been investigated, and all your other questions.

The MSL team will be doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, July 30, 2013 at 10:30 AM EST (15:30 GMT), in this subreddit: www.reddit.com...
Curiosity Rover subreddit (subforum) at Reddit:
www.reddit.com...

One of the key points of this thread was to show how distinct & visually compelling features were systematically ignored and/or explained away as ventifacts during the first part of the mission - while hundreds of other 'obvious' rocks had been imaged in great detail. That said, the official NASA/JPL standpoint suggests that there are no anomalies whatsoever ... just rocks and geological formations.

The AMA session on reddit will perfectly tie in with that public information policy. The board will consist of the same people who were involved with what I mentioned above & they won't violate the existing guidelines of communication. It will be a 'chance' to discuss rocks ... nothing less, nothing more.

reply to post by jeep3r


Would you be able to provide a compelling reason to examine a feature, beyond the "it looks interesting / anomalous / artificial / organic"? You could ask a doctor about various remedies and diet suggestions, but you don't walk in on a surgery operation and ask the surgeon to look here and there, or try cutting this or that. If you are a professional geologist, I'm sure Curiosity team would hear your concerns or propositions. But if you're just a member of a public saying "oh, that rock looks interesting, I think Curiosity should stop what it's doing and go examine it" then I'm afraid scientists will not take you seriously.

reply to post by wildespace


Not looking into one or two interesting features is one thing. Not investigating a whole variety of formations that are quite different from anything else in that particular area is another.

If we compare what has been imaged with what has not been investigated in detail, I come to the conclusion that there's a certain 'principle' involved. Also, there should be a correlation between how distinctive such formations are and the rather small amount of additional effort it would have taken to look into those more in detail (which I think NASA/JPL did, inofficially).

Originally posted by spartacus699
They didn't go to the moon, they pocketed the money,

They didn't go to mars, they pocketed the money.

It's just another con job. They use it as a basis to syphon off billions of dollars, under the illusion of this cheap movie they record in the desert somewhere. It's just more smoke n mirrors I'm sure.

Based on what

wildespace -

I think they didn't examine those "anomalies" more closely because they know them for what they are - ventrifacts and other erosion features. An interesting rock is still a rock, and devoting time and resources to examining it closely for no reason other than "it looks like an anomaly" would be a waste.

I have been told on here that since the atmosphere became thin, the only erosion which can effect anything larger than dust is by cosmic radiation.

It's quite clearly a natural formation, probably a layer of sediment exposed through wind erosion.

both statements by wildespace - There is NO wind erosion, dont kid yourself. You seem to be one of those who keeps perpetuating the idea that the wind on Mars is capable of erosion. Where is the evidence for this, because I could use that too in some of my posts. :-)

Zaphod58

Because the people that are qualified saw something in them that they thought was worth looking at. The rovers have a limited lifespan, and are slow, so if they drove to every anomaly to examine it up close, they would burn their mission time, and life cycle of the rover, for what would probably be little return.

Yet the scientists have time and energy to be driving in all kinds of circles and 'scuffing' with the rovers. Again, double standards because some people say that all these strange rover tracks are 'scuffings' and others, like me, say they are evidence of strange earthworks on Mars.

eriktheawful

I'm sure that if they did see something that they thought was not suppose to be there...is artificial in nature, or were the possible fossilized remains of something, they would have no trouble at all sending Curiosity on a deviated course to investigate further. I think what we are seeing here are two things: a trust issue, and a superiority issue.

You mean - like they did with the white pieces of plastic that 'fell off the rover'. Yeah, that was a load of cobblers too because there were many other strange white things found and not investigated and explained.

That means that we should also not just question what JPL/NASA shows us or tells us.....but we should also question those that have this hard core belief that JPL/NASA is always lying to them.

Tell me, do you keep believing a liar? No, you dont, you eventually realise that a compulsive liar, is a compulsive liar.

Silicis n Volvo - in your post here

i stand by my original statement that these images look like rocks and there is still no images from mars that are irrefutably not rocks. when I see an image that I can absolutely without any doubt say "thats not a rock" then I'll investigate

Big deal, fairly safe there aren't you? What happens when you investigate ? Why should your investigation be something we would value? If you find anything which makes you question your beliefs, you only have to say to yourself "That's probably a rock" and there you have a doubt. Anyway, I would like to have a go at challenging you on that with this post here.

Originally posted by qmantoo
You seem to be one of those who keeps perpetuating the idea that the wind on Mars is capable of erosion. Where is the evidence for this, because I could use that too in some of my posts. :-)

Where have you been hiding all this time? There is a wealth of evidence of aeolian activity on Mars.

www.lpi.usra.edu...
cseligman.com...
www.windows2universe.org...

You keep referring to the thread about dust on solar panels, where where exactly in that thread did someone say that there is no wind erosion?

Aeolian processes on Mars is one of the biggest areas of study.

reply to post by wildespace


What I think qmantoo is referring to is a study about erosion rates at the Pathfinder landing site - which indicates that the erosion rates during the Amazonian Period on Mars obviously weren't too dramatic:

The observation that the Mars Pathfinder landing site looks very similar to its appearance after it was deposited by catastrophic floods around 1.8–3.5 Ga allows quantitative constraints to be placed on the rate of change of the site since that time. The abundance of erosional features such as an exhumed former soil horizon, sculpted wind tails, ripplelike and other lag deposits, and ventifacts (fluted and grooved rocks) all suggest the site has undergone net deflation or loss of 3–7 cm of material (...)

Most ventifacts probably formed soon after the catastrophic flood, which likely introduced a large, fresh supply of sand-size particles distributed across the rocky plain.

Source:
Erosion rates on Mars and implications for climate change: Constraints from the Pathfinder landing Site (Abstract), M. P. Golombek N. T. Bridges, Journal of Geophysical Research (Volume 105, Issue E1, pages 1841–1853, 25 January 2000)

/underscore added/

You keep referring to the thread about dust on solar panels, where where exactly in that thread did someone say that there is no wind erosion?
Aeolian processes on Mars is one of the biggest areas of study.

So this large study area, obviously someone else thinks there is something screwey with this wind business too.

I looked at those 3 links and there are no images (out of all the rover images we have) of local wind ROCK erosion. However, we have plenty of satellite images of what they say is erosion and local images of dunes being built up and eroded.

The problem I have with all this is that in those links you gave, NASA scientists talk about BOTH huge erosion
cseligman.com...
a)Cliffs and buttes, resistant to erosion, in northern Sinus Meridiani (2.3N, 353.6W)
b)Three views of heavily weathered terrain in crater in western Arabia Terra.
Presumably caused by wind erosion of sediments laid down by unknown means.

antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...
c)Detailed view of similar weathering in Candor Chasma, a part of Valles Marineris

antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...
d)Heavily eroded mesa in Cydonia, notoriously known as the "face" on Mars.

AND weak winds which can hardly move anything bigger than small sand grains and certainly cannot be strong enough to blow blueberries around. (please reference your question on the dust thread and the post by Saint Exupery )

Both points of view cannot both be correct. If there is enough wind erosion to leave huge pieces of rock sticking up above the plains, then we cannot have weak winds not strong enough to lift even the largest grains of sand but only 'talc-sized' grains was how Saint Exupery put it I think.

also here
cseligman.com...
Close inspection of the image reveals that there is no alteration of the waves on the surface of the dunes, indicating that only the lightest, smallest particles were removed by the dust devils.
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...


I just do not see rounded edges to rocks on the ground to account for your wind erosion, so where is the local evidence of it on the ground affecting rocks?

So, yes, I am also concerned about the absolute opposites given out in NASA's information releases.

reply to post by qmantoo


Martian wind can be occasionally strong enough to move sand grains up the dune slopes. There are seasonal strong winds from the poles too.

Several recent studies have found evidence of current activity in Mars' sand dunes. In March of 2010, NASA released an image set from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ,which shows the appearance of new streaks on a dune slope in Nili Patera. These streaks indicate that winds have moved sand up the gentle side of the dune, over the dune crest, and down the steep side of the dune in a span of about 15 weeks.
Nathan Bridges of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, working with a team of researchers from various other institutions, has measured the active dune motion in Nili Patera. He and his team looked both at the full dunes and also the smaller scale sand-ripples that can form on dune surfaces. They found that ripples moved a distance of up to 4.5 meters over a period equal to about 100 Earth days. Dune crests moved about 0.3 meters over a period of about 3 Earth years. These results show that dunes on Mars are currently active, and not just at the surface, the entire sand volume of the dune must be mobile.

planetarygeolog.blogspot.co.uk...
www.wired.com...

I really wish you guys would get your wind story straight and all follow the same line.

There are so many conflicting pieces of text that no-one knows where the heck they are. I have posted different sides of the 'wind' coin so basically NASA want to be able to use BOTH arguments according to their whims and which fits best in a particular moment.

I am not arguing this any further since both arguments are correct and both are wrong too. Call themselves scientists huh? It appears they are not really sure what is happening out there with the wind.

reply to post by qmantoo


People who replied to you (including yours truly) can occasionally be wrong. Sometimes we make an assumption based on what we've read, but which may be proven wrong with further research. So don't just take people's word for it, and refer to the actual articles and papers.

I have given you material that shows that martian wind can be strong enough to transport sand grains. I haven't seen any paper or article showing that martian wind is too weak to pick up anything but the finest dust particles. If there is one (or more) please link it for me if it's not too much trouble.

P.S. I have looked over the thread you keep referring to at www.abovetopsecret.com... and I don't see any link to an article or paper that shows that martian wind is too weak for sand or larger dust particles. In fact, you yourself linked to a HiRISE article that explains that martian dust and sand grains can damage your spacesuit visor. hirise.lpl.arizona.edu...

You seem to have constructed a strawman here.

Originally posted by wildespace
reply to post by qmantoo

 

People who replied to you (including yours truly) can occasionally be wrong. Sometimes we make an assumption based on what we've read, but which may be proven wrong with further research. So don't just take people's word for it, and refer to the actual articles and papers.

I have given you material that shows that martian wind can be strong enough to transport sand grains. I haven't seen any paper or article showing that martian wind is too weak to pick up anything but the finest dust particles. If there is one (or more) please link it for me if it's not too much trouble.

P.S. I have looked over the thread you keep referring to at www.abovetopsecret.com... and I don't see any link to an article or paper that shows that martian wind is too weak for sand or larger dust particles. In fact, you yourself linked to a HiRISE article that explains that martian dust and sand grains can damage your spacesuit visor. hirise.lpl.arizona.edu...

You seem to have constructed a strawman here.

edit on 6-8-2013 by wildespace because: (no reason given)

put some flour in a jar,suck 99percent of the air out,then turn a fan on. Guess what happens?

Originally posted by qmantoo
I really wish you guys would get your wind story straight and all follow the same line.

There are so many conflicting pieces of text that no-one knows where the heck they are. I have posted different sides of the 'wind' coin so basically NASA want to be able to use BOTH arguments according to their whims and which fits best in a particular moment.

I am not arguing this any further since both arguments are correct and both are wrong too. Call themselves scientists huh? It appears they are not really sure what is happening out there with the wind.

This quote of yours from one of your other threads again shows that you DON'T understand what you see in an image.

Originally posted by qmantoo

So in fact that although the white dust (more like smoke) is blowing one way, the dust devil itself is moving another direction.

Here is one on Earth


The top is behind the base The one on mars was many kilometers high.

Higher up the column wind velocities change that's why the part on the surface is head of the top of the column.

The wind can blow small particles of grit and sand others gave you info on that it's you that cant understand what you SEE or what is EXPLAINED to you.

wmd_2008 - None of what you have said actually answers the wind question - see the last paragraph.

Wildespace -

People who replied to you (including yours truly) can occasionally be wrong. Sometimes we make an assumption based on what we've read, but which may be proven wrong with further research. So don't just take people's word for it, and refer to the actual articles and papers.

Yes, me too. :-)

I have given you material that shows that martian wind can be strong enough to transport sand grains. I haven't seen any paper or article showing that martian wind is too weak to pick up anything but the finest dust particles. If there is one (or more) please link it for me if it's not too much trouble.

I dont keep links to articles unless I use them in posts. Saint Exupery says this and mentions the Wikipedia article linked in the next quote.

Remember that Mars' atmosphere is only 1/50 to 1/100th the density of Earth's atmosphere. That means that an 80-knot wind on Mars would not be strong enough to knock-over a child. Now, according to this article...

Martian dust ... is less than 30 micrometres in diameter.

...which is ~1/167th the diameter of one of your 5mm blueberries. Volume goes up as the cube, so assuming similar density, the 5mm ball of hematite has over four-and-a-half MILLION times the mass of each dust grain.

It should be obvious that in such an environment, winds that can lift particles not much bigger than talc would not budge larger, pea-sized rocks, even in Mars' reduced (0.38%) gravity.

So I took this as a fairly good source, not as good as the official NASA ones, but reasonably good.

From the same Wikipedia martian soil article above

Similarly sized dust will settle from the thinner Martian atmosphere sooner than it would on Earth. For example, the dust suspended by the 2001 global dust storms on Mars only remained in the Martian atmosphere for 0.6 years, while the dust from Mt. Pinatubo took about 2 years to settle.[15] However, under current Martian conditions, the mass movements involved are generally much smaller than on Earth. Even the 2001 global dust storms on Mars moved only the equivalent of a very thin dust layer – about 3 µm thick if deposited with uniform thickness between 58° north and south of the equator.[15] Dust deposition at the two rover sites has proceeded at a rate of about the thickness of a grain every 100 sols.

The point I was making is that in that thread there are people (particularly Saint Exupery above) who tells me that the wind is not strong enough to move (not even pick up, but move) small 5mm and less spherules. Now, these may be concretions or they may be made of other less dense material, but whatever they are made of, I do not see them being blown into piles like I would have expected if the wind was anything much.

However, we have NASA and you saying that the wind is relatively strong (compared with the previous example) with wind storms from the poles reaching 400kph (I think), dust storms which cover half the planet, dust devils which leave tracks on the ground, and huge rock outcrops which they say have been eroded by the wind. I posted links to these previously. You are also saying that the wind picks up sand grains which do not sound like "less than 30 micrometres in diameter" to me. Is that 10 to-the-minus-6 metres or 3 millionths?

Which one is correct? Either the wind has enough force to blow actual sand grains (and maybe larger), cleaning the rovers panels, and eroding rocks or it is very weak and only blowing talc-powder-sized dust and not eroding rocks? Thats what I am asking but dont seem to be getting any difinitive answer.

reply to post by qmantoo


One Micrometre is 1/1000 of a millimeter, or 0.001 millimeters.

A martian dust grain that is 30 micrometre is only 0.030 millimeters big. And the article cites them to be that size or smaller.

Particles suspended in the air are 6 micrometre or smaller (that is 0.006 millimeters).

The blueberries at 5 millimeters would be 5,000 micrometre in size. It's over 166,666 times bigger than the biggest dust particles.

Wind erosion on the rocks takes a long time, even here on Earth. On Mars it takes even longer, but we're talking millions to 10's of millions, or 100s of millions of years (staggering numbers, and if rocks were there a billion years ago, that's 1,000 million years).

reply to post by jeep3r


really man...I just don't get it. That pic No2...for me it's the best out of place artifact on Mars to date...

Some people are seeing this and with a straight and calm face..."rock...dude".

Come on people...at least...admit...It does not look like a rock...something is sticking out of dirt...it shines...resembles metalic quality...

If I saw this here on earth...I would stop and see what it is. It so drastically sticks out of the rest of the environment...that you have to be blind not to notice it or take interest. Also...the shape of it....


...aaaah....what's the point anyway. I give up.