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Spotlight On Mars - Image
To Follow the Water on Mars, Look for Fins!
April 17, 2008
This animated gif is three images. The first image shows the sand-strewn, flat surface of the light tan rock outcrop with the fin viewed from above. An arrow points to the fin, a very thin blade of material standing on edge and casting a little bit of a shadow at the rock's left edge. Near the upper 'cutting' edge of the fin are the gray, broken-off flakes shown in greater detail in the accompanying microscopic image mosaic. The second image shows an overhead view of Opportunity's robotic arm and its multiple scientific tools hovering over a thin blade extending upward along the left edge of a flat rock.  The third image is a microscopic image mosaic which shows a close-up look at mineral accretions along the razorlike edge of the fin and flakes on its side. It also shows a couple of 'flakes' -- pieces of the fin that have broken off and are now lying on their sides in some wind-blown sand.


Though they're not attached to creatures of the deep, fins made of rock poke up above the surface and suggest past water on Mars. NASA's Opportunity rover took images of a thin fin on the edge of a rock in "Victoria Crater." The fin was rich in hematite, a mineral that often forms in the presence of water. Long ago, water circulating through a crack in the sandstone may have dissolved some of the surrounding material and filled the crack with mineral deposits. The filling resisted weathering while the surrounding rock eroded away. Today, the fin marks a place that used to be empty, and the space around it used to be rock! Scientists nicknamed the blade "Dorsal Fin" because it resembles the fin on the back of a fish.

Image courtesy:

Navigation camera/Panoramic camera/Microscopic imager

Robotic arm image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
False-color image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Microscopic image mosaic credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

Higher Res Images:
This image shows an overhead view of Opportunity's robotic arm and its multiple scientific tools hovering over a thin blade extending upward along the left edge of a flat rock.
Robotic Arm
This image shows the sand-strewn, flat surface of the light tan rock outcrop with the fin viewed from above. An arrow points to the fin, a very thin blade of material standing on edge and casting a little bit of a shadow at the rock's left edge. Near the upper 'cutting' edge of the fin are the gray, broken-off flakes shown in greater detail in the accompanying microscopic image mosaic.
False-color
This microscopic image mosaic shows a close-up look at mineral accretions along the razorlike edge of the fin and flakes on its side. It also shows a couple of 'flakes' -- pieces of the fin that have broken off and are now lying on their sides in some wind-blown sand.
Microscopic mosaic
USA.gov
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