• threelonmusketeers
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    2 days ago

    So cool to see the drilling/grinding process!

    Why does the dust appear green? Are Mars rocks red on the outside and green on the inside, like some sort of reverse watermelon?

    • paulhammond5155@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 days ago

      I found the dossier documents I referred to in my last reply

      Here is the link to the Planetary Data System (PDS) page that addresses the M2020 Sample Dossiers prepared and issued by JPL.

      If you’ve not already read these treasure troves, I suspect you’ll need to assign a good few hours to digest their contents. The reports have been collated and updated throughout the last couple of years, but the PDS page has the versions available at this time, further collections will be added to the bundle at future dates and some bundles will be updated from time to time, so visit the page often if you find the reports interesting.

      Note that the PDF’s in the 'Initial Reposts section are quite large. They do carry a warning: The Initial Reports are near-real-time records of activities surrounding sample acquisition, analogous to field notes. They are preliminary, and the interpretations and even some of the underlying measurements will be revised and described more fully in detailed follow-on publications.

      LINK: https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mars2020/returned_sample_science.htm

    • paulhammond5155@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 days ago

      I realise that they call the images on the mission server ‘Raw’ but these are not raw images, but automatically processed images by JPL or ASU, and then placed on the server. All those images need to be properly calibrated before being used for science. Many of the green hues we see on these images are likely associated with the Bayer filter on the CCDs used in the colour cameras for the mars missions. The way it was explained to me is that they all use RGGB Bayer filters i.e. an array of red, green and blue sensors, but note that there are two letter “G’s” in the ‘RGGB’, this means the CCD has a grid composed of 50% green sensors, 25% red and 25% blue. This leads to an over saturation of green in most of the colour images. There may well be amounts of green materials (eg olivine) in some abrasion patches that are imaged using the white LEDs after sunset, but when you see the calibrated images in science papers etc there is far less green. I’ll see if I can find links to the PDF’s that show calibrated close ups of abraded patches :)