Search Ames

Go

Text Size

Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Missions Interview with
NASA Ames Research Center planetary geologist Jeff Moore

Recorded January 8, 2004, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

For use on: Description Size
Radio 16 bit 44.1 kilohertz stereo WAV 10.5 meg
Radio 320 kbps MP3 2.38 meg
on-line mono -56kps MP3 427 k
on-line stereo WMA 581 k

To Download Files:
From a Macintosh Operating System, click and hold the dominant mouse button to "download link to disk" on your hardrive.

From a Microsoft Windows Operating System, right click on the file and "save the target as" on your hardrive

To find information on a specific player to listen to the audio recording, please refer to our Site Tools Page.

Full Transcript (below)


9.Why does the Martian soil look muddy where the MER airbags contacted the ground?” (1:02 MINUTES)
Jeff Moore: "The slick, mud-like looking appearance of disturbed ground where the airbags, umm, have been dragged across the surface as they were pulled up underneath the lander is probably due to a combination of two things – that beneath the rocks there’s probably a layer of very fine grain dust storm fallout which has basically the same consistency and particle size as talcum powder or flour. And just as you can . . . you can do this experiment at home. You can take flour or talcum powder and dump it on the kitchen table and smooth it with your hands or knife or something and it will make that same sort of silky, compact, umm, mud-like looking texture that you see in the pictures on Mars. That in combination probably with some electrostatic forces holding the little clay-size particles together all work in concert to produce that sort of appearance.”

Multimedia Archive | MER Missions with Jeff Moore