More Marsian geology..

On the subject of the rock “Adirondack”…

When the first full colour images came in I saw that the rocks were grey-green, have little bubble holes (the name of which I can’t remember how to spell is pronounced vee-ci-cles), are fine grained and break with sharp, angular edges. I thought, “Hmm.. that looks like basalt, probably olivine rich.” It’s the rock formed by the cooling of lava which comes out of mid-ocean ridges and places such as Iceland and Hawaii. Or, if you’re hard up, there’s some of the stuff eroded out in the north of Scotland. Smash up a pillow lava and have a look.. it’ll look just like the rock on Mars.

Well, ‘s the analysis from the Spirit rover.

Somehow, instead of sending all sorts of expensive instruments with the rovers they should just have given it a hand lens and a nice hammer. It would have saved JPL millions of dollars!

Actually, they could have saved rather more by putting one rover in the dunes at Dawlish Warren and the other on the lava fields of Hawaii.