MRO EXPECTATIONS? Update

 

Supplement Report #094

November 7, 2005

 

 

In some excellent research that I did not have the time for, viewer Dave Lackey has brought to our attention the official explanation for the three dark spots presented in my third and fourth images of the original report. These official narrative explanations are to be found in a press release on 3/5/2004 and in a daily update on 2/29/2004 at the following respective links.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040305a.html

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/daily.cfm?date=2&year=2004

Basically, the official explanation is that these spots are areas cleaned off by brushes located on the RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) rotary drill head which is one of the instruments located on the rover's articulating arm. For a better understanding of the nature of the RAT instrument developed by Honeybee Robotics in New York, its purpose, how it works, and some reasonably informative color images, go to the following links.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft_instru_rat.html

http://athena.cornell.edu/pdf/tb_rat.pdf

http://www.hbrobotics.com/rat.html

For some much larger higher detail but slower loading color images of the RAT demonstrating its relative size and drill head configuration, go to the links immediately below. Be aware that Honeybee Robotics shows this head both with a single sweeping type fixed brush on the outside edge of the drill head and also additionally with a slightly smaller brush on a tiny articulating arm right on the drill head itself. I have confirmed via a number of rover photos that the Spirit RAT on Mars uses the dual brushes configuration rather than the single brush only type. The last two image links below confine their close-up view to the dual brush head configuration.

http://www.hbrobotics.com/rat/RATCokeCan.JPG (entire RAT size compared with a can of Coke)

http://www.hbrobotics.com/rat/RATEMbase.JPG (bottom full on view of head & dual brushes)

http://www.hbrobotics.com/rat/EM2flagshield.JPG (profile side view of head & dual brushes)

I accept that the RAT probably produced these marks and we can thank Dave Lackey for pointing us to this information. However, this information in no way alters the main thrust of my reporting as to the inconsistency of this type of visual evidence. For example, I most definitely do not believe that the dark surface area within the dark spot's outer perimeter as I reported on is a real surface but rather I suspect a artificially and graphically manufactured one that reproduces this bumpy pattern wholesale in the RAT mark areas as well as on the surrounding lighter portions of the larger rock area as well.

It is the same false evidence produced in the rover track I originally reported on giving it a false aged look filling in its deepest tread indentations that also isn't real. The same thing is happening with these RAT brushing marks that show not the slightest sign of any rotational brush marks or for that matter any sign of peripheral dust or debris cleaned off the spot by the brushing. In my opinion, that is because this more subtle evidence on the rock surface was routinely covered over by the image tampering application that hugs to and plasters to the objects and recreates only a uniformly bumpy but essentially blank surface mimicking the original in basic outline but without any true finer geological or RAT detail.

Then there is the issue of now you see the spot RAT brush marks and now you don't as per my original reporting. If we assume that the official explanation is true and correct about the RAT brushing, then we are talking about these spots not being simple color imprint marks on the rock face that just might have responded to filter changes eliminating their visual presence but they are a physical defacement and alteration of their area of the rock surface that could not respond to the filter changes. Here again this brings up the question of artificial intervention in the removal of the defacement spots from subsequent imaging as per my original reporting.

Now please understand that this isn't a matter of hiding something specific in these locations I've reported on. It is done wholesale in the imaging just in case some small piece of evidence that might represent life is missed. It is done on a larger scale to produce the pebble bumpy like texture going on down a sliding scale to a much finer tiny scale mimicking small particulate sand and everything in between. Larger well defined evidence like rover tread tracks and true RAT drill holes are impacted by altering their visuals giving them an aged look while smaller and thinner brush mark and debris evidence is completely covered over with a falsely recreated surface removing the more subtle evidence from view.

Why do this? Well because even the extremely poor resolution degraded compressed .JPEG imaging as released to us still might be able to show us small evidence like ants or other insects or mold, lichen, etc. in the terrain closer to the rover camera. There is just too much detail in such imaging that overwhelms by sheer numbers. This can't be dealt with by individuals and must be done by super fast computers via automated software. Artificially reproducing the sand, etc. gets rid of tracks and nests evidence, etc. So this basic digital mapping wholesale tampering's goal is to get rid of such smaller detail while at the same time guaranteeing an arid dry as dust landscape interpretive perception. In other words, it sanitizes the general terrain of troublesome small anomalous evidence not completely obscured by the general degraded resolution techniques. Larger anomalous evidence the size of rocks and larger is handled by a different set of map image tampering software parameters.

If one reviews a large number of visual evidence of RAT activity spanning many Mars Sol days and examines it carefully, one can see the difference between obviously truthful RAT drill hole sites with clean drilling site surfaces as one would expect them to be from such a rotary abrasion tool and others that have been artificially aged visually when this false mapping image tampering bumpy pattern has been applied to these surfaces. There isn't room for reporting on all this here but for those interested in doing some research on their own, go to the link below for some RAT samples in the Spirit raw imaging. On that page choose the Panoramic camera list box and then choose the Sol days listed below for some examples of different RAT evidence at different locations. It may give a reasonably good overall picture of this type of evidence and the problems associated with it, especially if you examine it very closely.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit.html

030 - 035 ..... Sol days
055 - 060 ..... Sol days
079 - 086 ..... Sol days
200 - ............ Sol day
230 - 231 ..... Sol days
236 - 238 ..... Sol days
285 - ............ Sol day
298 - 299 ..... Sol days
334 - ............ Sol day
337 - ............ Sol day

I told myself that I wasn't going to bog down this update report with any imaging but I just felt compelled to show you the following lone image of a RAT brushed spot on a rock face. See if you can quickly see anything wrong with it?

The large light color round spot is the RAT brush mark not to be confused with a RAT actual drilling where a deeper hole with its sharper outline is formed. The problem that I have with this particular image evidence is that the spot is so perfect in its detail and outer perimeter edges and yet it clearly covers a shallow ridge irregularity (both raised and depressed area) in the rock surface in the right portion of the spot. Clearly the abrasive rock cutting drill head wasn't a factor here that might have ate down into and leveled the rock surface to produce such a relatively perfect mark outline.

If you did any close examination research on other RAT evidence sites, you'll see that brushing a irregular surface like this produces either a partial imprint with the mark concentrating on the nearest elevated surface and missing any depressed surface area or the drill itself becomes involved by leveling the raised surface to the level of the depressed area producing a full well defined perimeter edge imprint. I doubt that manipulation of the robotic arm would be capable of this but, if it was, a rocking motion just might help produce such a well defined imprint but almost certainly at the cost of planning off the raised area surface within the mark and we can clearly that this hasn't happened here.

Now a soft flexible sponge like surface might have adapted to this spot's surface irregularity but of course we know from the previous links and their information above that this doesn't exist on the flat head of the RAT. Could it be that the map type image tampering has covered and recreated all of the surfaces we see here both within the spot perimeter and on the rest of the rock surfaces including mimicking the basic outline of the RAT activity and color contrasts on this rock?

I don't have any definitive answers to this but it's just another example of the very suspicious inconsistency of this rover imaging evidence so close to and only a few feet away from objects and that evidence is an advance look at what we can probably expect from the future MRO science data downstream with its closer orbit and better camera systems when and if it ever starts coming from Mars and is released to us. As I stated in the original report, digital imaging technology advances across all fronts making more and better information available to some select few but also making the technology more and more effective at obscuring truthful information for the rest of us who paid for all this.

Is this situation acceptable to you? I can't answer this for you. If it isn't acceptable, then make your voice heard in the media and ultimately at the highest levels of government. In other words, draw attention to this growing anomalous evidence record. Change only comes when people get fed up enough and demand it.

DOCUMENTATION

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/299/2P152915434ESF89AIP2549L7M1.HTML: This link takes you to the Spirit Sol day 299 science data image of the RAT brushed mark on the rock in my above image in this supplement addendum report.

, Investigator