Sulfur-Rich Rocks and Dirt (True Color)

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Caption:

NASA's Mars Rover Spirit has been analyzing sulfur-rich rocks and surface materials in the "Columbia Hills" in Gusev Crater on Mars. This image of a very soft, nodular, layered rock nicknamed "Peace" in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. shows a 4.5-centimeter-wide (1.8-inch-wide) hole Spirit ground into the surface with the rover's rock abrasion tool. The high sulfur content of the rock measured by Spirit's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and its softness measured by the abrasion tool are probably evidence of past alteration by water. Spirit's panoramic camera took this image on martian day, or sol, 381 (Jan. 27, 2005). The image represents the panoramic camera team's best current attempt at generating a true color view of what this scene would look like if viewed by a human on Mars. The image was generated from a combination of six calibrated, left-eye Pancam images acquired through filters ranging from 430-nanometer to 750-nanometer wavelengths.

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