Wind-related processes detected by the Spirit Rover at Gusev Crater, Mars.

Salty Soils at Gusev Crater as Revealed by Mars Exploration Rover Spirit

Synthesis of a spinifex-textured basalt as an analog to Gusev crater basalts, Mars

Analyses by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER), Spirit, of Martian basalts from Gusev crater show that they are chemically very different from terrestrial basalts, being characterized in particular by high Mgand Fe-contents. To provide suitable analog basalts for the International Space Analogue Rockstore (ISAR), a collection of analog rocks and minerals for preparing in situ space missions, espe...

Silica Retention and Enrichment in Open-system Chemical Weathering on Mars

Spirit: The Spirit rover at Gusev Crater traversed across 7.7 km over an operating lifetime of 2210 sols and analyzed with its APXS approximately 225 distinct targets. Fig. 1 depicts Mg/Si versus Al/Si for all the Gusev samples. A circular reference zone is plotted to represent an approximate average Mars crustal composition and the dashed lines bound the expected values for unaltered martian i...

The Spirit Rover's Athena science investigation at Gusev Crater, Mars.

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and its Athena science payload have been used to investigate a landing site in Gusev crater. Gusev is hypothesized to be the site of a former lake, but no clear evidence for lacustrine sedimentation has been found to date. Instead, the dominant lithology is basalt, and the dominant geologic processes are impact events and eolian transport. Many rocks exhibit co...

Magnetic properties experiments on the Mars exploration Rover Spirit at Gusev Crater.

The magnetic properties experiments are designed to help identify the magnetic minerals in the dust and rocks on Mars-and to determine whether liquid water was involved in the formation and alteration of these magnetic minerals. Almost all of the dust particles suspended in the martian atmosphere must contain ferrimagnetic minerals (such as maghemite or magnetite) in an amount of approximately ...