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Bruce Murray Space Image Library
'Big Sky' and 'Greenhorn' drilling area on Mount Sharp
This view from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity rover covers an area in "Bridger Basin" that includes the locations where the rover drilled a target called "Big Sky" on sol 1119 (Sept. 29, 2015) and a target called "Greenhorn" on sol 1137 (Oct. 18, 2015). Color-coded dots represent the amount of silica in targets examined by the ChemCam instrument. A key on the right shows the percentage of silica (SiO2), by weight, corresponding to the color-coding. Enrichment in silica clearly corresponds to the fracture zones.
The scene combines portions of several observations taken from sols 1112 to 1126 (Sept. 22 to Oct. 6, 2015) while Curiosity was stationed at Big Sky drilling site. The Big Sky drill hole is visible in the lower part of the scene. The Greenhorn target, in a pale fracture zone near the center of the image, had not yet been drilled when the component images were taken. Researchers selected this pair of drilling sites to investigate the nature of silica enrichment in the fracture zones of the area.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS