Subscription Center
September 17, 2012 | 12
Knock, knock—it's Opportunity. That's right, Curiosity isn't the only rover in town. Back in 2004 the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the Red Planet for 90-day missions that have been extended by several years. After a scientifically fruitful stint, Spirit became mired in sand and ceased communicating with Earth in 2010, but Opportunity is still slowly exploring the Martian surface. Long before car-sized Curiosity stole the show, NASA had been using the much smaller rovers to gather data about whether Mars could support life.
Not to be outdone by the newcomer, Opportunity is looking at the Kirkwood outcropping on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, on the opposite side of the planet from Curiosity. (There are no plans for the two rovers to rendezvous.) Opportunity snapped this image of tiny, rounded "spherules" on September 6 using the microscopic imager on its arm, one of its many built-in scientific instruments. This view is only 60 millimeters across, and is made up of four images stitched together. The largest of these intriguing spherules in the picture are about 3.175 millimeters in diameter.
Opportunity is no stranger to teensy, globular Martian formations. Back in 2004, it found hematite-rich spheres dubbed "blueberries" near its landing site. Those formations may have been caused by long-ago liquid water. Opportunity has been studying the newly discovered spherules with one of its tools, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer. The mysterious, new bumps are different in composition from the blueberries, and scientists don't yet have a prevailing theory on their origin.
—Evelyn Lamb
See what we're tweeting about
BecCrew I have no idea what this means but I love it so much http://t.co/NA5WMMApWS
DNLee5 #DispatchesDNLee: Non-target capture Marsh Mongoose: http://t.co/h6iOKMW63v via @YouTube
Horganism Ahab to severed whale head: O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham and not one syllable is thine!
Deadline: Jul 30 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Seeker desires a method for producing pseudoephedrine products in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for clandestine che
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
12 Comments
Add CommentBased on the "popped" ones- it looks like something caused gas to build up within a membrane stretching it until at least some of them "popped". Almost like yeast within bread.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLava-seltzer? If these turn out NOT to be volcanic then they're quite a find.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCuriosity or no, I'm still a fan of this little guy. 9 years and a few 'extra' craters and it's still bravely limping about. And doing great science. Give him a cookie or something. Or a trophy.
fossil eggs... Who knows?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe glad sun.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith a
certain delight
a magical
sound returns
in the place
where your
memory
outshines....
Francesco Sinibaldi
Think big. They're fossilized eggs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean dinosaur eggs??? Wouldn't that be something???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks a bit like a Lapilli Tuff (volcanic hail stones :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispossibly implying moisture in the atmosphere at the time of deposition...just a thought
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Tephra.html
Could it be the floor of an ancient dried out ocean ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey look like tiny fossilized eggs that were collapsed, in some cases, by an outside force pushing down on them. One on them, in fact, appears to have had twin embryos in it. They may have been a mass of eggs glued to an underwater surface, which dried out and died when the water level dropped. Poor little fishies. Or they could have been gas bubbles in mud.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey Joseph, do you mean they could be something similar to phosphate nodules? Good thought...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy guess? Sublimating (or evaporating) low-PPM water ice perhaps warmed from above by a more briny and perhaps acidic low-pressure-durable solution which was dissolving its sedimentary load of fine particles into a cement, which hardened during the process of off-gassing of water vapour from the more pure layer below....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think i'll go with gas bubbles in mud but??????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this