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Old 12-24-2017, 09:40 PM
 
Location: PRC
6,948 posts, read 6,872,488 times
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Take a look at this official NASA MSL rover picture please. You may have to enlarge it to look more closely.

I want to point out these tracks which appear on the rovers surface(see section below). There are at least 5 of these appearing around the bottom center of the image.
Each one appears to have a small pea-sized 'rock' at the left hand end of it and, according to the tracks left behind, each appears to have been moved in the same direction.

I would like to examine opinions as to what would have caused these tracks to appear like this on the rover surface?

Now, before we move too hastily to make a judgement that wind blew these tiny 'rocks' and made these tracks, just bear in mind a few things.
1) 'blueberries' found on Mars are a similar size and do not get blown about (no evidence in images).
2) These tiny 'rocks' have not rolled along over the surface of the dust deposited on the surface of the rovers deck, but have been effectively PUSHED through the dust leaving a white trail from the painted surface underneath.
3) There is a barrier of sorts which caused a buildup of dust to be deposited on the rovers surface. The barrier is the line of cables in the center of the picture running towards the camera. We can see it forms a wind-break because the dust is deposited in a thicker layer to the left of these cables, YET the tiny 'rocks' and their trails are all moving through this thicker layer of dust which should be in the lee of this barrier, in the more sheltered area. Even the trail to the right of the cables has moved through a thicker layer of deposited dust and also moving in the same direction.

So what do we think may have caused these tracks we see in this photo?

This is the area and the 'rock' tracks.
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