Perseverance / Ingenuity

[JohnD]

A fibula would be fabulous, Orin! As would banning autocomplete.

[orin stepanek]

A fibula would be fabulous, Orin! As would banning autocomplete.

Corrected! Thanks John!

[neufer]

Close-up photo of a fossilized fibula. Its owner, a titanosaur, was likely suffering from the bone disease osteomyelitis. Credit: Tito Aureliano

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Twas on the evening news! A relief of sorts! I hope we get some fibulas Photos back & learn more about Mars!

A fibula would be fabulous, Orin!

A fossilized fibula photo would be fabulous!

[Chris Peterson]

Close-up photo of a fossilized fibula. Its owner, a titanosaur, was likely suffering from the bone disease osteomyelitis. Credit: Tito Aureliano

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Twas on the evening news! A relief of sorts! I hope we get some fibulas Photos back & learn more about Mars! 8-)

A fibula would be fabulous, Orin!

A fossilized fibula photo would be fabulous!

A (fortuitously found) fossilized fibula photo would be fabulous!

[neufer]

A (fortuitously found) fossilized fibula photo would be fabulous!

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The cliffs to the plateau appear to be apparently unscalable

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<<The Lost World is a novel by SHERLOC author Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1912, concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America. The cliffs to the plateau itself prove to be apparently unscalable, but an adjacent pinnacle turns out to be climbable, and moreover, has a tall tree which can be cut down and used as a bridge, which allows the four explorers to cross to the plateau.

Whilst investigating the wonders of the lost world, discovering many plants and creatures thought to be extinct, they narrowly escape an attack from pterodactyls. Although barely escaping with their lives, Roxton takes great interest in nearby blue clay deposits. At night a ferocious dinosaur is about to break through the thorn bushes surrounding their camp; Roxton averts disaster by bravely dashing at it, thrusting a blazing torch at its face to scare it away. Later, all except Malone are captured by a race of ape-men. Whilst in captivity they discover that a tribe of natives, with whom the ape-men are at war, inhabit the other side of the plateau. Roxton escapes and together with Malone mounts a rescue, preventing many unpleasant deaths, including a young native who is a prince of his tribe. The rescued natives take the party to their village, then with the help of their firepower return to defeat the ape-men. After witnessing the power of their guns, the tribe wish to keep them on the plateau but, helped by the young prince they saved, they eventually discover a tunnel leading back to the outside world. During their time with the tribe, Roxton plans how to capture a pterodactyl chick, and succeeds in doing so.>>

[Ann]

Color Commentator chiming in...

Perseverance landing on a very dark Martian surface. Photo: NASA, JPL, Mars 2020.

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The landing site of Perseverance is seen to be non-red in color.

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Perseverance's first color picture of Mars after landing. Wait... the sky is blue? Photo: NASA/JPL.

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So we have been taught that Mars is the Red Planet, and its skies are a shade of pale apricot in color. But that's not what I'm seeing in the first color picture of Mars by Perseverance.

Of course there are areas of dark surface material on Mars. But I thought that the Martian sky was globally reddish. Is that not the case, then?

Is the sky over Perseverance blue because the regolith of the landing site isn't red?

Ann

[neufer]

Perseverance's first color picture of Mars after landing. Wait... the sky is blue?

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So we have been taught that Mars is the Red Planet, and its skies are a shade of pale apricot in color. But that's not what I'm seeing in the first color picture of Mars by Perseverance. Of course there are areas of dark surface material on Mars. But I thought that the Martian sky was globally reddish. Is that not the case, then? Is the sky over Perseverance blue because the regolith of the landing site isn't red?

• The science team has stated that they haven't had the opportunity to color correct as yet.

Sunset (animated) – Gale crater (April 15, 2015)

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<<Generating accurate true-color images from Mars's surface is surprisingly complicated. To give but one aspect to consider, there is the Purkinje effect: the human eye's response to color depends on the level of ambient light; red objects appear to darken faster than blue objects as the level of illumination goes down. There is much variation in the color of the sky as reproduced in published images, since many of those images have used filters to maximize their scientific value and are not trying to show true color. For many years, the sky on Mars was thought to be more pinkish than it is now believed to be.

It is now known that during the Martian day, the sky is a butterscotch color. Around sunset and sunrise, the sky is rose in color, but in the vicinity of the setting Sun it is blue. This is the opposite of the situation on Earth. Twilight lasts a long time after the Sun has set and before it rises because of the dust high in Mars's atmosphere. On Mars, Rayleigh scattering is usually a very weak effect; the red color of the sky is caused by the presence of iron(III) oxide in the airborne dust particles. These particles are larger in size than gas molecules, so most of the light is scattered by Mie scattering. Dust absorbs blue light and scatters longer wavelengths (red, orange, yellow).>>

[neufer]

A (fortuitously found) fossilized fibula photo would be fabulous!

Left astragalus/talus, lateral surface

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A Wind Carved Rock [Astragalus?} from Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument

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<<The talus (Latin for ankle), talus bone, astragalus, or ankle bone is one of the group of foot bones known as the tarsus. The tarsus transmits the entire weight of the body from the lower legs to the foot. The talus has joints with the two bones of the lower leg, the tibia and thinner fibula. These leg bones have two prominences that articulate with the talus. At the foot end, within the tarsus, the talus articulates with the calcaneus (heel bone) below, and with the curved navicular bone in front; together, these foot articulations form the ball-and-socket-shaped talocalcaneonavicular joint.

The talus is the second largest of the tarsal bones; it is also one of the bones in the human body with the highest percentage of its surface area covered by articular cartilage. It is also unusual in that it has a retrograde blood supply, i.e. arterial blood enters the bone at the distal end. In humans, no muscles attach to the talus, unlike most bones, and its position therefore depends on the position of the neighbouring bones.

The talus apparently derives from the fusion of three separate bones in the feet of primitive [Jezero lake?] amphibians; the tibiale, articulating with tibia, the intermedium, between the bases of the tibia and fibula, and the fourth centrale, lying in the mid-part of the tarsus. These bones are still partially separate in modern amphibians, which therefore do not have a true talus. The talus forms a considerably more flexible joint in mammals than it does in reptiles. This reaches its greatest extent in artiodactyls, where the distal surface of the bone has a smooth keel to allow greater freedom of movement of the foot, and thus increase running speed.

Dice were originally made from the talus of hoofed animals, leading to the nickname "bones" for dice. Colloquially known as "knucklebones", these are approximately tetrahedral. Modern Mongolians still use such bones as shagai for games and fortune-telling, with each piece relating to a symbolic meaning>>

[Orca]

For a proof-of-concept mission, I'd say Ingenuity has been a resounding success!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56912808

The microphone on Perseverance was able to record the sound of the helicopter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5niGi4k9vQ

I can imagine a future mission with multiple drones, larger ones that can cover more area. I think they make the most sense as "additional eyes" for the rovers rather than a pure drone mission to Mars simply because land-based rovers can do the "heavy lifting" in terms of experiments (to say nothing of carrying enough power to get signals back to Earth).