Categories: Mars

Mars Jelly Doughnut Rock Mystery Solved

This image from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where a rock called "Pinnacle Island" (lower left corner) had been before it appeared in front of the rover in early January 2014. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

This image from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where a rock called “Pinnacle Island” (lower left corner) had been before it appeared in front of the rover in early January 2014.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

(NASA) – Researchers have determined the now-infamous Martian rock resembling a jelly doughnut, dubbed Pinnacle Island, is a piece of a larger rock broken and moved by the wheel of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in early January.

Only about 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters), the white-rimmed, red-centered rock caused a stir last month when it appeared in an image the rover took Jan. 8 at a location where it was not present four days earlier.

More recent images show the original piece of rock struck by the rover’s wheel, slightly uphill from where Pinnacle Island came to rest.

“Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,” said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. “We drove over it. We can see the track. That’s where Pinnacle Island came from.”

Examination of Pinnacle Island revealed high levels of elements such as manganese and sulfur, suggesting these water-soluble ingredients were concentrated in the rock by the action of water. “This may have happened just beneath the surface relatively recently,” Arvidson said, “or it may have happened deeper below ground longer ago and then, by serendipity, erosion stripped away material above it and made it accessible to our wheels.”

Now that the rover is finished inspecting this rock, the team plans to drive Opportunity south and uphill to investigate exposed rock layers on the slope.

Opportunity is approaching a boulder-studded ridge informally named the McClure-Beverlin Escarpment, in honor of engineers Jack Beverlin and Bill McClure. Beverlin and McClure were the first recipients of the NASA Medal of Exceptional Bravery for their actions on Feb. 14, 1969 to save NASA’s second successful Mars mission, Mariner 6, when the launch vehicle began to crumple on the launch pad from loss of pressure.

“Our team working on Opportunity’s continuing mission of exploration and discovery realizes how indebted we are to the work of people who made the early missions to Mars possible, and in particular to the heroics of Bill McClure and Jack Beverlin,” said rover team member James Rice of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz. “We felt this was really a fitting tribute to these brave men, especially with the 45th anniversary of their actions coming today.”

Opportunity’s work on the north-facing slope below the escarpment will give the vehicle an energy advantage by tilting its solar panels toward the winter sun. Feb. 14 is the winter solstice in Mars’ southern hemisphere, where Opportunity has been working since it landed in January 2004.

“We are now past the minimum solar-energy point of this Martian winter,” said Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “We now can expect to have more energy available each week. What’s more, recent winds removed some dust from the rover’s solar array. So we have higher performance from the array than the previous two winters.”

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didiernewmane says:

February 14, 2014 at 4:12 pm

So, isn't there fossils or life expressions on Mars and elsewhere? Is the emergence and maintenance of life a process of radical contingency? That is, is a unique and unrepeatable past totally necessary? Or does life emerge through space like mushrooms and jelly doughnuts when some conditions are present? So, how many conditions are necessary: three, four, trillions, infinite? Only one, water or any sort of God? Is God the word that means infinite conditions, absolute necessity? Anyway, how did the life that emerge in a given conditions resist when switching to a different moment? How does life resist time itself, the effects of entropy? But, is it possible for human beings to recognise a simpler life than their own brain only? On the other hand, beyond likeness, is it possible to recognise a complex life than their brain, is this the extra-terrestrial life that some people are searching unsuccessfully? However, is there an origin of life or would it be as finding a cut in the material history of the universe, an infinite void that human language patches now? Along these lines, there is a peculiar book, a short preview in goo.gl/rfVqw6 Just another suggestion, far away from dogmas or axioms.