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Last Updated: Monday, 28 June, 2004, 08:35 GMT 09:35 UK
Spirit finds its pot of haematite
Pot of Gold   Nasa
Scientists have been puzzled by Pot of Gold's "crazy" shape
The Spirit rover on Mars has identified haematite at a location half way around the planet to where its twin buggy Opportunity found the same mineral.

Haematite is normally formed in the presence of water - certainly on Earth.

Spirit's discovery was made in front of the so-called Columbia Hill in a very odd-shaped rock dubbed the "Pot of Gold" by US space agency scientists.

The rover celebrates six months on the Red Planet this coming week and its performance continues to delight Nasa.

The US space agency's Spirit robot has taken panoramic and microscopic images of Pot of Gold, which has a strange knobbly form.

The rover has also looked in detail at the rock's mineralogy with two spectrometers.

And the buggy intends to drill into the rock's interior once it has manoeuvred into an ideal position.

Water story

Scientists are trying to figure out how Pot of Gold got its strange shape.

"This rock has the shape as if somebody took a potato and stuck toothpicks in it, then put jelly beans on the end of the toothpicks," Steve Squyres, the lead scientist on the rover's instrument package, said.

"How it got this crazy shape is anyone's guess. I haven't even heard a good theory yet."

Further study of Pot of Gold could also help scientists assess what the haematite in it tells them about past environmental conditions.

"Haematite can form in a few different ways. Most of them require water, but it can also result from a dry, thermal oxidation process," Dr Doug Ming, a rover science-team member, said.

"It was haematite identified from orbit that made Meridiani Planum a compelling place to send Opportunity.

"There, we've learned that the haematite is indeed part of a water story."

Deeper still

Opportunity itself is currently edging its way into a 130m-wide depression known as Endurance Crater.

As it goes deeper it continues to find more of the sulphate salts it found widely distributed at its Eagle Crater landing site.

Those salts, together with other evidence, told scientists the rover was sitting on the shoreline of what was once a lake or sea.

The discovery of similar evidence in the Endurance rocks that are deeper than the Eagle ones may indicate something about the volume of water that once covered this part of Mars.

Professor Squyres said: "I had thought we might see just basalt below the top salty layer, but instead it's salty as far as we've been able to see so far.

"Every time we see more sulphates as we work down this stack, it adds to the amount of water that was necessary to make this happen."




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