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PIA16205: Wheel Scuff Mark at 'Rocknest'
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the 'Rocknest' site to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) 
 Spacecraft:  Curiosity
 Instrument:  Navcam (MSL) 
 Product Size:  1024 x 1024 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA16205.tif (1.05 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA16205.jpg (281.5 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple. The rover's right Navigation camera took this image of the scuff mark on the mission's 57th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 3, 2012), the same sol that a wheel created the mark. For scale, the width of the wheel track is about 16 inches (40 centimeters).

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2012-10-04