Sorry, I couldn’t resist it! 🙂
I did warn you that things would really, really slow down once Oppy rolled up onto Cape York, didn’t I? Well, they have. After brushing it clean of dust and then drilling into it with its Rock Abrasion Tool (or… yes, you’ve got it, RAT”…) Oppy is now taking a good, long, hard look at a patch of light-toned bedrock christened “Salisbury”, analyising it with its suite of scientfic instruments to see exactly what its made of and how it came to be that way. She’ll be doing this for a while, as itr now takes days and days to do what only used to take hours, but that’s okay, the view here is great, and Oppy came to Mars to Do Science, not tear across Mars like a drag racer! 😉
So, let’s take a look at where we are. Here’s a 3D view of Oppy’s robot arm hovering over “Salisbury”…
Look closely at that and you’ll see what looks like a small hole beneath the robot arm, on the surface of the rock…? let’s move Oppy’s arm out of the way to see that more clearly…
What Oppy has done there is drill into Salisbury, just a short way, to expose the ‘raw’ rock beneath the weathered surface. If we zoom in on that particular part of the rock you’ll see it…
That shows you the “before” and “after” views, how about a more realistic-looking view of the drill area..?
That’s the wide-angle view, and pretty interesting it is too, but it’s only when you look at the view of the driller area as seen by Oppy’s Microscopic Imager that you start to see detail within that drilled area… (click to enlarge – it’s worth it!)
Next: Oppy photographed from above…! 🙂
The Road To Endeavour 