Mars Index - Top Ten MER Images - Top Raw Images
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Circular depressions in flat, skyward-facing rocks mark the places where the rover ground holes and brushed the surface with its rock abrasion tool. On the left is a 9-millimeter-deep (0.35-inch-deep) hole; on the right is a flower-shaped arrangement of seven circular features where the rover brushed away dust.
Deep Hole in 'Clovis'
07/01/2004
Spirit
Spirit dusts off a rock, creating a six-petalled "brush flower" just before setting a record for the deepest hole ever drilled on Mars so far.
At a rock called "Clovis," the rock abrasion tool on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit cut a 9-millimeter (0.35-inch) hole during the rover's 216th martian day, or sol (Aug. 11, 2004). The hole is the deepest drilled in a rock on Mars so far. This approximately true-color view was made from images taken by Spirit's panoramic camera on sol 226 (Aug. 21, 2004) at around 12:50 p.m. local true solar time -- early afternoon in Gusev Crater on Mars. To the right is a "brush flower" of circles produced by scrubbing the surface of the rock with the abrasion tool's wire brush. Scientists used the rover's Mössbauer spectrometer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to look for iron-bearing minerals and determine the elemental chemical composition of the rock. This composite combines images taken with the camera's 600-, 530- and 480-nanometer filters. The diameter of the hole cut into the rock is 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches).

Image Credit: JPL/NASA/Cornell