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A new abrasion patch imaged on May 25, 2026 (Sol 1870)
(lemmy.world)
A processed 4-tile front-left HazCam image.
We can see one of the rover's cameras that's mounted on the turret, is acquiring close up images of the patch. We're waiting for those close-up images to be downlinked.
For scale the abraded patch is 5 centimeters (2 inches) in diameter
The raw images were a little overexposed, I've corrected that in this post.
what's the going theory as to what causes this?
Before drilling rocks, the rover abrades the rock surface using a tool on its robotic arm to clear away dust and weathering rinds, allowing other instruments to study the rocks in detail. The abraded patch is 2 inches (5 centimeters) in diameter. .
The 2 abrasion bits are on the RH side of this image
Oh, sweet. That's pretty cool. We love studying mars rocks. My sleepy brain thought that they had discovered rocks that were abraded.
👍
Is the one on the LH the regolith collector? It's been used just twice? And, are they still on the first coring bit?
Yes, the LH bit is one of the 2 regolith bits onboard the rover
Yes, only 2 regolith samples have been collected. I suspect each regolith bit was used only once (to prevent cross contamination)
No, they have used 5 of the 6 coring bits so far:
Coring Bit 1: used 8 times
Coring Bit 2: used 4 times
Coring Bit 3: used 2 times
Coring Bit 4: used 9 times
Coring Bit 5: used 5 times
Coring Bit 6: not used yet
There have been a bunch of abrasions, but I can't find which abrading bit was used on each abrasion of the 2 abrasion bits inside the rover.
WB = Witness Blank
Two tubes remain unsealed (Bell Island & Gallants) These may be dumped and reused if more interesting targets become available in the future
I feel a little out of touch, thank you for the detail. Paul, your posts are always appreciated.
That data was taken from JPL's 5 Interim Sample Reports that are lodged in the mission PDS as PDF files, and as such does not include any failed attempts to capture a core sample as that detail is not always recorded.
They've not been coring for quite some time as they have limited tubes left, so they've just been scouting and abrading. Because of the political uncertainty of funding for a mission to retrieve the samples, I can only assume there is no rush to core / seal any tubes at this time, so we're likely to see the scouting continue for some time.
One of the posters to this community is compiling a huge collection of data from the >50 abrasion patches created during this mission, it will make a hugely interesting source for mission nerds to check out once completed
Check his posts on: https://lemmy.world/u/SpecialSetOfSieves?page=2&sort=New&view=Posts