Dennis Bakner at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, written by PostDoctoral Fellow
In the last few weeks, firmness has been examining some curious shells in the “Witch Hazel Hill” area with the rim of the Zesero Crater. A striking cluster of small bubble-shaped stones was first seen by the Mastcam-Z instrument in “Broome Point” in a rock called “Saint Pauls Bay” on Soul 1442 (March 11, 2025). Some soul later, a similar assembly was discovered by a supercam instrument near “Matty Michel” near “Panchon Rock”. As the rover continued with his travelers, it appeared circular. In the target of Targate St. Pauls Bay and Matty Mitchell, the shells are densely packed and look almost like grape bunches. Somewhere else, similar small shells were found to stop with other grains inside the rock. On a target called “debris apple” in the “Sally Ke Kov” outcrop, the individual shells were set in a matrix of thick, dark grains. More of these circular characteristics have been embedded in a fine-dinner, layered beddow in a nearby area called “Dennis Pond”.
Although the team was surrounded by a circular-rich layers in Sally’s Kov and Dennis Pond, these outflows were challenging to access the rover arm. After some discovery to find an accessible goal, the team decided to do a friction in a neighboring outflow, called “pine ponds”, with the expansion of the layers of the Dennis pond. The team selected “Hare Bay” “Hare Bay” in the hope of finding shells within a rock interior, and conducted closeness science comments with Pixl and Surloka to examine their composition and internal structure. Images of the friction patch taken by Watson suggests that green bays contain light-tond medium-sized grains, with millimeters shaped shells in the entire rock! Leading hypotheses for the origin of these regions involve formation by volcanic activity or impact-related processes.
After finding an accessible circular-bearing rock, the team is currently difficult to collect a circular sample! With the information already collected by Mastcam-Z, Supercam, Pixel, Sherlok, and Watson, future laboratory analyzes can help solve the mystery of when, where, and how these shells have been formed, which can separate the surface of Mars and separate geological phenomena!
