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Balanced Rock at last

Balanced rock close-up

My pessimistic prediction that Curiosity’s science team would take the least risky route and thus not pass close to the butte with the balanced rock has fortunately turned out to be very wrong! They have moved Curiosity into the closest gap to get the best views of both the balanced rock as well as the butte behind it. The image on the right, cropped, was taken by the rover’s mast camera as Curiosity entered the gap between the buttes. It shows clearly that balanced rock broke off from the layers above and landed on its side.

The image below the fold shows the same butte after Curiosity had passed the balanced rock (inside red box).

Murray Butte

close-up

To the right is a close-up showing the area in the red box. You can clearly see the vertical bedding planes on the backside of the rock. In fact, if you look at the entire face of the butte as well as the debris below, you can see that it is heavily layered, and that pieces have been breaking off it repeatedly to roll down the slope. Not surprisingly, the science team has been taking a lot of images of this face and its layers.

As noted at the second link above,

The weekend plan went well, so the plan for Sol 1432 is to keep driving! Curiosity will go about 52 meters across a patch of sand, but before that we have a short science block.

To my delight, they are going to cross the patch of sand that crosses the gap, taking the most direct route into the mesa-filled territory to the south, heading directly towards Mt. Sharp’s upper slopes.

The land beyond

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • Localfluff

    Cool that they are going this way!
    I don’t see how it is evident that the balanced rock could have broken free from the butte above. It is much less red. And equilateral, not layered.

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