Sharp-eyed Mars Exploration Rover (MER) scientists are puzzling over very fine, thread-like features spotted in the soil at Opportunity's landing site within Meridiani Planum.
The tiny objects are millimeters to a few centimeters in size. While the minds-eye might jump to a number of thoughts as to their origin, caution is the watch-word from Steve Squyres, MER Principal Investigator from Cornell University.
The objects may be from Earth, transported to Mars onboard Opportunity, Squyres said.
"Before I would get too excited about something like this, I would recall that this vehicle [Opportunity] landed using an awful lot of fabric. That fabric took quite a beating in the process of through it [the landing]," Squyres told reporters Thursday during a press briefing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The minuscule objects seen in the Microscopic Imager (MI) pictures could be threads of airbag fabric tossed into the landing zone, Squyres said.
"I'll be honest with you. We don't know what these things are. We have seen themjust a very limited number of them and we're puzzling it out."
Planetary protection
A step toward understanding what they are involves the rover leaving the small crater in which it is now exploring. "Get a good long safe distance awaythen see if we see any more of them," Squyres said.
"I don't know that these things are martian," Squyres said. When looking out in the near field using the rover's Panoramic Camera (Pan Cam), he added, there is clear evidence of "bits and pieces" of what's probably fabric left behind as Opportunity bounced and rolled along.
"If you are seeing pieces of fabric in the Pan Cam images, it wouldn't be a total surprise to me to see this kind of stuff in the MI images," Squyres concluded.
The thread-like features are also of interest to specialists in planetary protection.
If these tiny objects are a result of flotsam brought to Mars from Earth, it underscores the need for care in not contaminating the landing scene by future landers.
Be it small bits of spacecraft materials or microbes brought from Earth, forward contamination of a scientific scene makes it all the more difficult to conduct research in a hoped for pristine martian environment.
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