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An omen for Oppy? Curiosity suffered an anomalistic memory issue in mid-September and the Mars Science
Laboratory (MSL) team didn’t see rover’s workspace and target, Inverness, for more than a
month. “And there were some surprises in store for us!” Melissa Rice, a collaborator on MER, and
an MSL Participating Scientist,wrote in the MSL blog. In the Mastcam images above, the rock
was covered with gray-colored tailings, but when the team took another look on Oct. 25th, voila!
The tailings and a lot of the dark brown soil and reddish dust were gone. “The winds have been
moving, sweeping the workspace clean,” noted Rice, of Western Washington University. On the
other side of Mars, Opportunity is waiting for winds to clear her solar arrays. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems