SpecialSetOfSieves

I'm as far from being an artist as you can get, but I like what you and supersquirrel are aiming at. As you know, I've been thinking about data visualization and presentation for these missions a fair bit recently. Personally, I find natural color images like this one from the curvilinear unit plenty spectacular and readable as is, but in general, a lot more work needs to be done to convey these missions to people.

If I've learned anything from supersquirrel's point, it's that we need to show multiple perspectives on the landscapes these rovers see. The missions have a natural tendency to do most of their imaging during the middle of the day, but that hazy dusty mid-day illumination is nothing like the sharp lighting that morning and evening shadows bring to the landscape. At the same time, I'm always worried about data/visual overload in these situations...

Interesting.

I've been looking at rover images for so long now (20+ years without any significant interruption) that I don't even see "beige planet" anymore. It's been long enough that I find non-geologist perspectives like yours kinda refreshing. I hope you don't mind a couple of questions:

• Do images like the one below help with the appreciation part? It's a montage from Perseverance of all the abrasion holes it's made so far. No color processing whatsoever, no artistry, just the raw, sunlit, close-up images.

I'm showing this just so you can see the natural range of colors that get exposed once the ubiquitous red dust gets swept away. Still a lot of orangey-beige at first glance here, admittedly, but the tans, ruby reds and browns really pop in the full-res images.

• Older missions used to use false color images as well as natural color images - often to spectacular effect (see this false color vs. natural color pair from Opportunity). Do you find the false color images more palatable?

Serious questions here. I'm always wondering how science people can convey this stuff better to the broader public. I like your idea about the artists, that's for sure.

I miss those. These missions need a great deal of mapping to really be understood. Thanks for doing those, I hope to see them again!

Two whole sols with absolutely no images on the server. And this is far from the first time we've seen this in 2025.

Maybe we should send these volunteers to sniff and taste the damned fragments for us, it might get to be more efficient. 🤬

I'd like to apologize to Paul and others here for my slow/non-existent replies of late. I hope to post quite a bit I've been fitfully working on later in June.

Before and after comparison:

White/light-toned fragments certainly interesting; that stuff deserves multi-spectral imaging at the very least! I'd be delighted with PIXL/LIBS analysis too, unless the science team knows a lot more about the geology here than they've shared to date!

Similar to the whitish spots in the adjacent abrasion patch? Light-toned material seems to be a surface/coating on several large fragments, and doesn't seem to be uniform in thickness or extent. It also doesn't seem to be loose/powdery material, given that it coats the fragments and hasn't spilled away from the fragments. There was no hint of the whitish stuff from the tailings made at the abrasion patch. The dark brownish fragment appears to simply be the natural surface with (all?) the dust shaken off, but none of the whitish material seems to have been at the surface, based on the frames taken during drilling; it seems that stuff was exposed when fragments were exhumed/overturned.

Seriously, I hope the science team is going to give this stuff the full treatment. Whitish rocks have turned out to have diverse and surprising mineralogy on this mission !

Thanks so much for the detailed reply, Paul! I'm looking forward to playing with this data. I'll let you know as soon as I'm ready.

Sedimentary?

I don't think so, but I can elaborate if you're still interested.

I, for one, really appreciate your efforts. I would never have begun thinking about this data if you hadn't been so consistent about posting it. Eventually I'm going to have to learn to extract the data myself, but right now I'm a little busy reading about the maturing science on this mission. I do tend to get a little over my head with projects like this sometimes, but I'm steadily working away at that abrasion patch guide, so that'll come first.

BTW - new abrasion patch! I've already posted about it!

These are all concise and readable, thanks!

That 18º max. roll in either direction surprised me, I thought it would be considerably less. I'm sure Percy can handle a lot more, but perhaps the sampling system can't? As for pitch, this press release from last year says that the rovers can handle up to 30º slopes, so Percy hasn't maxed out at any point on this mission yet. Considering that we should be returning to the floor of Jezero at some point, maybe we'll see those steeper slopes...

Thanks for these as always, Paul. A while back you asked for suggestions about these updates, I believe. I have a request, if it's not too much trouble: would it be possible to include a line indicating the maximum pitch angles (positive and negative) that have appeared in these updates? I find that it really helps visualization (well, mine, at least) to know the steepest slopes we've seen on the mission.

I don't blame you for being surprised. I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find an official source for the planned future route of the rover down to the level of Nili Planum/Lac de Charmes. All I can see online is the original animation from the AGU presentation last year. Route information doesn't turn up in this year's LPSC abstracts, unless I've missed something.

In any case, my understanding always was that they were going to drive down to the edge of the ripple/TAR field at the base of the rim, so they seem to following the plan for now.