Disturbed Pitted Rocks

        This mosaic was acquired by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on Sols 5061 and 5062 (April 19 - 20, 2018). Approximately 18 degrees across at the widest point, the image shows a disturbed area on the left of the rover featuring and outcrop of pitted rocks. Towards the bottom of the disturbed area, it looks like the rover may have flipped a rock over that the science team thinks could have a white coating visible on the rock. NOTE: Missing data and other artifacts in this mosaic are the result of the images being acquired while the Opportunity rover was operating in "RAM mode". That is, because of issues with the rover's onboard Flash memory storage, sometimes data are stored directly in the rover's volatile RAM memory instead, and then downlinked to Earth. At the end of each sol of RAM mode operations, however, when the rover shuts down, all of that sol's data is erased. Thus, any missing images, missing color channels, or data transmission errors cannot be fixed by retransmitting the missing data the following sol, like we can do during Flash mode operations. Pancam's 753 nm, 535 nm, and 432 nm filters were used in this mosaic.  Three versions are provided at full resolution: an overhead perspective projection of an approximate true color rendering, an overhead perspective projection of a false color rendering which enhances the subtle color differences in the scene, and an overhead perspective projection of a stereo anaglyph for 3D viewing through red-blue glasses.

Jim Bell
Pancam Instrument Lead
May 29, 2018