NASA’s Curiosity rover has pictured a rock on the Mars surface – on a piece of ground where a previous photograph showed nothing.
Before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a bright rock on to the scene.
The rover had completed a short drive just before taking the second image, and it is thought that one of its wheels may have knocked the rock – dubbed “Pinnacle Island” – to this position.
The rock is about the size of a doughnut.
The images (pictured left) are from Opportunity’s panoramic camera (Pancam).
The one on the left is from 3 528th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars (26 December 2013). The one on the right, with the newly arrived rock, is from Sol 3 540 (8 January 2014).
Much of the rock is bright-toned, nearly white. A portion is deep red in colour.
Pinnacle Island may have been flipped upside down when a wheel dislodged it, providing an unusual circumstance for examining the underside of a Martian rock.
The site is on “Murray Ridge,” a section of the rim of Endeavour Crater where Opportunity is working on north-facing slopes during the rover’s sixth Martian winter.
