Jim's Personal View of Anomalies

Pathfinder a blasted and washed over site

The purpose of this presentation is to explore an impression I have of the Pathfinder landing site. From the very first time I viewed this area I was impressed with how much it looked like it had been formerly inhabited. I made several web pages on different aspects of the site and many of the people I collaborate with have often used the term 'blasted' to describe their own impressions.  I noted in earlier presentations that one of the possibilities for the blasted apearance of the area might be the big crater that is proximal to the site, NASA itself states that "...NASA has selected an ancient flood plain on Mars as the landing site for the 1996 mission of Mars Pathfinder..." What I found curious was that the direction of the flood plain and the direction of the destruction was not the same.  This page describes that theory. If you note the direction of the blast is from the bottom of the image upwards, then you must also realize that the flood plain itself is oriented so that the water would have flowed from the top of the image down.  Twin Peaks is pictured in the overhead image at right as being to the left or west of the lander. In the Pathfinder images at ground level we are looking out directly at the Twin Peaks, so we are gazing west. The direction of the blast from the big crater would be from the south southeast. The water flow should be coming from the north but it looks more like the water was channeled from the twin peaks towards the lander.  The conclusions I have arrived at are that this area suffered a two fold devastation, first it was blasted by the nearby impact and secondly it was washed over by on rushing waters.

Click the link below for full sized version, image credit to  http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/marsland.html  North is to the top of the image.

This descriptive paragraph is from Science Magazine and linked to from the pathfinder site. It is self-explanatory and included here to support my developing theory. The references for the bibliography can be viewed from the above link to Science Magazine.

Overview of the Mars Pathfinder Mission and Assessment of Landing Site Predictions

M. P. Golombek, * R. A. Cook, T. Economou, W. M. Folkner, A. F. C. Haldemann, P. H. Kallemeyn, J. M. Knudsen, R. M. Manning, H. J. Moore, T. J. Parker, R. Rieder, J. T. Schofield, P. H. Smith, R. M. Vaughan
 

Geology and geomorphology. Many characteristics of the landing site are consistent with its being shaped and deposited by the Ares and Tiu catastrophic floods (10). The rocky surface is consistent with its being a depositional plain (16% of the area is covered by rocks; Plates 5, 8, 9, and 10) with rounded to semirounded pebbles, cobbles, and boulders that appear similar to those of depositional plains in terrestrial catastrophic floods (see below). The Twin Peaks appear to be streamlined hills in lander images, which is consistent with interpretations of Viking orbiter images of the region that suggest the lander is on the flank of a broad, gentle ridge trending northeast from Twin Peaks (Fig. 5). This ridge, which is the rise to the north of the lander, is aligned in the downstream direction from the Ares and Tiu Valles floods and may be a debris tail deposited in the wake of the Twin Peaks. Rocks in the Rock Garden (Shark, Half Dome, and Moe; Plate 6) may be imbricated blocks generally tilted in the direction of flow (Fig. 1). Channels visible throughout the scene (Fig. 1 and Plates 1b and 4) may be a result of late-stage drainage. Large rocks (>0.5 m) appear tabular and semirounded, and many appear perched, consistent with deposition by a flood. Smaller (<0.3 m), angular, darker rocks and blocks may be ejecta from a nearby crater (10). Evidence for eolian activity at the site includes wind tails behind rocks and wind streaks of what appears to be very fine-grained bright red drift material, similar in color to dust in the atmosphere. The presence of dirt covering the lower 5 to 7 cm of several rocks suggests that they have been exhumed (10). Some rocks appear to be fluted and grooved by saltating sand-sized particles in the wind, and light-colored sand dunes have been imaged in the trough behind the Rock Garden by the rover.
 
 
 
 
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