Could the white splatters be some kind of highly reflective mineral deposit of some kind in the rock. This may be burning out the exposure (so-to-speak) so it appears white on the b/w picture? There is a lot on the sun-side of the sticking-up piece of rock.
In the middle of the top of ths picture it looks as if something has made a groove in the soil. the groove runs southwest to northeast going out off the top edge of the picture and that area looks as if it has been disturbed which maybe due to the wheels as has been said.
Hi nice post. Judging by the size of the hollow behind the object, it seems the shard was lying down. It was forcefully up righted causing the gathering of the soil at the base. This could have been caused by the rover or something else wanted this standing to stop the rover from proceeding. The white flecks are signs of untempered surface. the darker soil is signs of tampering. There are structures underneath ( i feel ).
gbull wrote:what are the white spatters? did the rover go up over the rock?
Hi gbull, I don't think Spirit went over the rock, more like it stopped beside it where the tracks are visible and then proceeded to drill the deeper hole and sweep the surface (white spots mosaic) for IR analysis.
On a more serious note, it looks like Spirit ran over it, disturbing the ground and exposing it. Unfortunately we'll never know whether its made of stone, an eroded timber or a corroded metal bar. I'd love to hear what the Cornell Uni folk think of it? BTW the stick is anything between 5-10 cm long and they did obviously use IR spectrometer to examine the 7 spots seen below
-- Edited by Humanoid on Tuesday 8th of December 2009 10:55:30 PM