Opportunity Microscopic Imager mosaic, sol 3064: spherules

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Opportunity Microscopic Imager mosaic, sol 3064: spherules

A mosaic of four images captured with Opportunity's Microscopic Imager on sol 3064 (September 6, 2012) shows strange spherules embedded in a fine-grained matrix. At the time, Opportunity was on the inner rim of Endeavour crater at Cape York, exploring a fin-like outcrop.

NASA / JPL / USGS / Stuart Atkinson

From unmannedspaceflight.com.

Copyright holder: Stuart Atkinson

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about September 6, 2012

Comments:

Quatguy: 09/06/2012 06:09 CDT

Look like concretions. A number of the broken ones seem to have a resistant lump at or near the middle. Need a sample return mission.

JMEA: 09/15/2012 11:51 CDT

Do we know the nature of the surrounding rock? Igneous? They don't look like vesicles formed from gas bubbles in lava. They seem too layered inside for that. Also I can not see any that merge or overlap (each spherule seems to have its own discrete boundary): wouldn't we expect that from gas-formed spherules?