The picture that has been, clicked from Curiosity’s ongoing location on Vera Rubin Ridge, includes a unique view by the Mast Camera of the drifter itself.
This blended picture made accessible by NASA shows the Curiosity rover at Vera Rubin Ridge on Mars. A skinny layer of dirt is detectable on the nuclear-powered rover, the outcome of a storm that enveloped the planet this summer. The dusky sky is from dirt still in the atmosphere.
This rover has sent back a 360-degree perspective view of the Martian landscape, which is exposing the chromatic skies darkened by a hazy planet’s dust storm that has masked the red planet for weeks. The picture also includes a unique view that reveals a thin layer of dust on its deck. After collecting a new rock sample on August 9, the rover overlooked its surroundings. According to NASA,” The last two drill attempts were defeated by unexpectedly hard rocks.” Rover started employing a new drill technique earlier this year to work around a mechanical problem.
Testing has shown that it was adequate at breaking rocks as the classical method, implying that the hard rocks would have posed a tangle no matter which technique was employed.
There’s no manner for Curiosity to see exactly how arduous the rocks are going to be before drilling it, therefore this latest drilling action, the rover team made an intelligent guess.
A broad ledge on the ridge was thought to incorporate more durable rocks, able to stand despite wind erosion; a spot below the ridge was thought to have erodible rocks. That plan looks to have washed out, however, queries still thrive on why Vera Rubin Ridge exists in the first place.
According to Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, “The rover has never confronted an area having variation in color and texture.” Moreover,”The ledge isn’t this bulky thing — it has two different parts, each of which has different colors,” He further said that some are visible to eyes and even appears brighter when we look in near-infrared just beyond what our eyes can see and some seem related to how arduous the rocks can be.
To test how hard the rocks are just drilled them into powder for the rover’s two internal laboratories. Considering them would possibly reveal what’s acting as “cement” in the ridge, making it stand despite wind erosion.
Possibly, Vasavada said, groundwater flowing through the ridge within the ancient past had a task in bolstering it, perhaps acting as plumbing to spread this wind-proofing “cement.” Two additional drilled samples are programmed for the ridge in September. After that, Curiosity will drive to the areas enriched in clay and sulfate minerals higher up Mount Sharp.
