Curiosity at Glenelg: Just a Bizarre Landscape or Something More Intriguing?

Originally posted by PINGi14

 

It'd be interesting to see if these formations can be found in orbital imagery of Mars surface.

Apologies, I didn't really get back to that in my previous post!

Unfortunately, these rounded surface details are much to small. In both cases, we're talking about approximately 2-3 meters of maximum length. And on top of that they are not directly facing upward. With MRO's resolution of 70 to 80cm/pixel there wouldn't be much to recognize from the HiRISE orbital images.

And that's why we need a system called MArs Geoscience Imaging at Centimeter-Scale (MAGIC). With that, we would be able to spot a lot more things from orbit. Here goes a simulated illustration of what it would look like seen from Earth orbit:


And here's the PDF explaining the more technical imaging aspects of MAGIC. I'd say that would definitely be a gamechanger!

Here's an update regarding what I meant when referring to feature 4 "The sunken rocks of Glenelg"

Original NASA/JPL source images: image 1 / image 2 / image 3

It's freely interpreted, just the rough idea, with my imagination running wild, of course!


P.S.: The situation looks a little bit like in the image linked below ...