Download Card #

Diorama Scavenger Hunt Cards
#
What’s shown in
the picture
2
Close up of
dust collecting
magnetic ring
3
4
5
9
Label on Picture
Find this device that
resembles a row of three
targets. These circles are
magnets for collecting
high-iron magnetic dust
grain from the air.
Close-up of
Note the dust tail behind
scattered rocks the two largest halfand dust tail
buried rocks. Which
way does the wind blow
to create these dust tails?
Close-up of
This big dark rock has
medium sized been chipped. Does the
rocks
chip look natural or
human made?
Close-up of a
This device receives
wire dish
data from the orbiting
antenna
Mars transport
spacecraft, which serves
as an orbiting Mars
station.
Close-up Wind The very thin
speed indicator atmosphere on Mars
makes an ordinary
anemometer (wind
speed indicator) useless.
Can you locate this
digital anemometer?
Enrichment Facts MGGs can share with visitors
The magnets collect dust out of the atmosphere. By analyzing the chemical composition of
these dust grains, we can determine where on Mars the dust originated. This tells us about
wind patterns on Mars.
Notice the variety of rocks seen together. Apparently the wind blew away all the lighter
material leaving solids behind. Some the pink light colored rocks are sedimentary. The dark
rocks are igneous.
Most likely it was chipped by the astronaut activity.
This low-gain antenna sends and receives radio signals from the spacecraft in Mars orbit. The
spacecraft then communicates with stations on Earth. The time delay for radio signals between
Mars and Earth ranges from 4 minutes to 20 minutes depending upon where Mars and Earth
are in their orbits.
Since the atmosphere on Mars is too thin to spin a cup anemometer, a digital anemometer is
used. The wire is heated like the filament in an incandescent bulb. As the wind flows over the
wire, the wire is cooled. The rate of cooling will indicate the wind speed. Three wires aligned
along orthogonal (mutually perpendicular) axes provide data that can be reconstructed to give
speed and direction of wind.
12
Close-up of
large igneous
type rock
7
Phobos &
Deimos
When the pictures of
Mars came back from
the Pathfinder mission
in 1997, scientists gave
each prominent rock in
the pictures a nick name
like Yogi and Little Joe.
Can you think of a name
for this rock?
Look for these two
bright objects in the
Martian sky. They’re
moons but not like the
Earth’s big shiny moon.
This igneous rock is obviously different from the sedimentary rocks which predominate in the
canyon. How the igneous rock arrived here can tell a story about Mars. The rock could have
arrived in its location by being ejected after a meteorite impact a long distance away from
here; or it could have been thrown out by volcanic eruption or it might have fallen from a cliff
at the time when this canyon was much narrower than today.
Martian Moons: Phobos, Mars’ larger moon, the larger dot in the sky, and Deimos (smaller
dot) are visible in the northwest sky. Phobos (“fear”) and Deimios (“terror” so named because
they accompany the Roman god Mars, god of war). (For an animation of these see Starry night
Pro.)
Data for Mars Moons
moon
13
Layered “Hoo- Find this stack of rock, a
doo” with
hoodoo, which is a tall
background
thin spire of rock that
protrudes from the
bottom of an arid basin.
It probably formed due
to wind erosion by
strong prevailing winds.
Phobos
Dimensions
(miles)
12x14x17
Distance from
Mars (miles)
5,760 = 1.3 Mars
diameters
Orbital
period
7.7
hours
Deimos
6x8x10
14,560 = 3.5
Mars diameters
30.3
hours
Comment
Moves horizon to horizon in under 3.85 hours.
Since this is faster than Mars’ rotation period, it
appears to go west to east, “backwards.”
Horizon to horizon in 15 hours (Appears to move
east to west, “forward” as Earth’s moon does.)
The material in the hoodoo is a type of sandstone. The hoodoo itself suggests wind erosion.
Earth examples of hoodoos can be found in Bryce Canyon, Utah and the Badlands of South
Dakota.
14
15
LAN
Communication antenna
Layered rock
strata plus
medium
background
16 Base of
support pole
for table
This device is part of local a Local Area
Navigation (LAN) network, similar to
GPS, but ground based.
This canyon eroded when a crack on the
Mars surface widened laterally due to
permafrost erosion, leaving behind
some distinctive land forms. Find the
thimble shaped outcrop in the center
and the mesa nicknamed “short stack”
because it looks like pancakes. These
features can be seen from above on the
photograph behind you on the right.
Can you find this location? Has the
weight of the table leg gouged into the
rock, or is the rock hard enough to
support the load?
18
Gravelly exit
How many different kinds of rock can
from arroyo on you see here?
stage right
19
Support
structure
between PAM
and Cargo Bay
door
Astronauts are construction workers:
they set up pre-fabricated structures
once they arrive on Mars. Can you find
the strut in this structure?
The LAN network connects the various buildings, instruments and astronauts
using Line-Of-Sight communications. It triangulates from three or more
signals, much like the LORAN radar that is still used in some harbors on Earth.
Candor Chasma most closely resembles a rift valley, a fault line that opens up
by widening, on Earth. The initial fissure was likely caused by the weight of
the Tharsis lava flows or perhaps due to a planet-shaking tectonic event
associated with the large impactor that formed Hellas Planetia. Once the
ground fractured, newly-exposed permafrost then sublimed (evaporated) away.
The loose rock and soil on top of the permafrost layer, slid into the canyon,
where the wind excavated away the light material leaving behind the harder
rock we see here. The end result is the solar system’s largest canyon—at least
as far as we know.
To turn loose sand or ash into rock requires that the material is buried and
compressed. We know that in the past, Mars’ surface did subside (sink) then
later re-emerged. This must have been due to the underground flow of magma
(lava that never reaches the surface). Apparently all such movement has ceased
due to the cooling of the Martian interior.
These rocks probably got here by simply being left behind as the wind blew
away the soft material in which they were embedded. A second possibility is
that running water that existed on Mars long ago dumped them here. Chandor
Chasma canyon, though is NOT a water-carved feature as the Grand Canyon
on Earth is.
One of our astronaut crew’s missions is to construct a brick factory. The crew
are exploring ways to be more self-sufficient on Mars. NASA’s astronauts are
currently working as construction workers on the ISS
20
Cracks in layered
rocks
Martian landscapes do change over time,
but slowly. Can you locate these fractures
in the rock that might be due to an ancient
Marsquake?
21
Layers of rock
plus a fallen
boulder
22
Eye ring in rock
layer
Shadows on Mars are very dark and cold
due to the lack of dispersed solar energy in
the thin Martian air. What happens to very
cold material, even solid rock, that is
suddenly thrust into direct sunlight as the
morning sun rises?
Can you find this point of attachment of the
guy wire? These rocks layers are hard
enough to support the eye bolt.
23
Cable hardware
on PAM
Much hardware on Mars is off the shelf
stuff from earth, carefully selected and
tested. Can you find this hardware?
25
Vertical face with
face
26
Boulder cobbles,
wind fan, rock
layers
Can you see face in this rock outcrop? Are
such faces on Mars or in the eye of the
beholder? Also note the color of the sky, a
combination of light scattered from dust
particles and the low angle of the sun
passing through the hazy air.
This boulder fell from the layer above it.
Can you find the location it fell from?
Two sesimometers were flown on the Viking spacecraft back in 1976. One of them
worked, the other failed. Because the seismometers were located within the
spacecraft body and were not isolated, they mostly recorded rocking due to the wind
blowing over the lander body. There was one event that was recorded during the
night (when the winds were low) that might be a Marsquake. We can conclude that
if quakes still happen on Mars, they are very rare and very slight.
Expansion and contraction caused by extreme temperature swings (from minus 200°
F to positive 70° F) can cause the rocks to crack, especially when the sun light hits
them, after a long cold Martian winter night.
To turn loose sand or ash into rock requires that the material is buried and
compressed. We know that in the past, Mars’ surface did subside (sink) then later
re-emerged. This must have been due to the flow of magma (lava that never reaches
the surface) deep underground. Apparently all such movement has ceased due to the
cooling of the Martian interior.
While some specialized components will need to be created for planetary missions
other components will be “off-the-shelf.” However, even common looking items
will need to be specially engineered in order to handle the harsh conditions on Mars:
the extreme temperature variation, high levels of ultraviolet-C radiation, and
exposure to charged particles in the solar wind and galactic cosmic radiation
(cosmic rays) which reach Mars’ surface due to its lack of magnetic field.
The high noon color of the Martian sky is pink, and stars can be seen in the thin air.
At sunset the sky around the sun looks bluish.
Rockslides caused by permafrost sublimation (evaporation) are a main cause of
erosion. Mars’ surface is still be shaped by wind erosion and gravity. Candor Chasm
is still growing wider, though we don’t know at what rate, an inch a year or a
landslide every decade.