At 12:49:27 UTC the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) took this new photo of the drilling performed by Curiosity in the area called “Glen Etive 1” more than a month ago (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/photos/a.1625578140858706/2337403693009477/).
The photo was taken from a distance of 26.16 cm with a definition of 0.1005 mm/pixel, thus covering an area of 11.98 cm X 16.09 cm.
This is one of the first color photos sent to Earth by Curiosity after the Mars-Sun conjunction that, as I had already announced, has prevented communication with Mars for more than two weeks.
I find very interesting the comparison with the photo of the same subject taken more than a month ago, where you can see that the excavated material surrounding the hole has remained almost intact, contrary to what has been found in other drillings where the excavated material visibly degraded just a few days after the drilling itself.
On what can this singular behavior depend?
From a different wind speed in the interested period?
A different degree of humidity?
On a different hygroscopicity of the excavated material?
For the moment let’s ask the questions, sooner or later the answers will come.
To show colors more similar to those that the human eye would see, I subjected the image to a reduction of noise due to Jpeg compression, white balance and a slight increase in microcontrast and color saturation.
Finally, the photo was rotated 90° counterclockwise to facilitate comparison with the previously published image.
Original image: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/02523/mhli/2523MH0001970010903134C00_DXXX.jpg
This post has been automatically translated. See the original post here.