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Science 3 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5702, pp. 1723 - 1726
DOI: 10.1126/science.1105127
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Reports

Soils of Eagle Crater and Meridiani Planum at the Opportunity Rover Landing Site

L. A. Soderblom,1* R. C. Anderson,2 R. E. Arvidson,3 J. F. Bell, III,4 N. A. Cabrol,5 W. Calvin,6 P. R. Christensen,7 B. C. Clark,8 T. Economou,9 B. L. Ehlmann,3 W. H. Farrand,10 D. Fike,11 R. Gellert,12 T. D. Glotch,7 M. P. Golombek,2 R. Greeley,7 J. P. Grotzinger,11 K. E. Herkenhoff,1 D. J. Jerolmack,11 J. R. Johnson,1 B. Jolliff,3 G. Klingelhöfer,13 A. H. Knoll,14 Z. A. Learner,4 R. Li,15 M. C. Malin,16 S. M. McLennan,17 H. Y. McSween,18 D. W. Ming,19 R. V. Morris,19 J. W. Rice, Jr.,7 L. Richter,20 R. Rieder,12 D. Rodionov,13 C. Schröder,13 F. P. Seelos, IV,3 J. M. Soderblom,4 S. W. Squyres,4 R. Sullivan,4 W. A. Watters,11 C. M. Weitz,21 M. B. Wyatt,7 A. Yen,2 J. Zipfel12

The soils at the Opportunity site are fine-grained basaltic sands mixed with dust and sulfate-rich outcrop debris. Hematite is concentrated in spherules eroded from the strata. Ongoing saltation exhumes the spherules and their fragments, concentrating them at the surface. Spherules emerge from soils coated, perhaps from subsurface cementation, by salts. Two types of vesicular clasts may represent basaltic sand sources. Eolian ripples, armored by well-sorted hematite-rich grains, pervade Meridiani Planum. The thickness of the soil on the plain is estimated to be about a meter. The flatness and thin cover suggest that the plain may represent the original sedimentary surface.

1 U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA.
2 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
3 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
4 Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
5 NASA Ames/SETI Institute, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
6 University of Nevada, Reno, Geological Sciences, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
7 Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–1404, USA.
8 Lockheed Martin Corporation, Littleton, CO 80127, USA.
9 Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
10 Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO 80301, USA.
11 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
12 Max Planck Institut für Chemie, Kosmochemie, Mainz, Germany.
13 Johannes Gutenberg–University, Mainz, Germany.
14 Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
15 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
16 Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, CA 92191, USA.
17 Department of Geosciences, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
18 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
19 NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77058, USA.
20 DLR Institute of Space Simulation, D-51147, Cologne, Germany.
21 Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lsoderblom{at}usgs.gov

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Pancam Multispectral Imaging Results from the Opportunity Rover at Meridiani Planum.
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Evidence from Opportunity's Microscopic Imager for Water on Meridiani Planum.
K. E. Herkenhoff, S. W. Squyres, R. Arvidson, D. S. Bass, J. F. Bell III, P. Bertelsen, B. L. Ehlmann, W. Farrand, L. Gaddis, R. Greeley, et al. (2004)
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Localization and Physical Property Experiments Conducted by Opportunity at Meridiani Planum.
R. E. Arvidson, R. C. Anderson, P. Bartlett, J. F. Bell III, P. R. Christensen, P. Chu, K. Davis, B. L. Ehlmann, M. P. Golombek, S. Gorevan, et al. (2004)
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Mineralogy at Meridiani Planum from the Mini-TES Experiment on the Opportunity Rover.
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Jarosite and Hematite at Meridiani Planum from Opportunity's Mossbauer Spectrometer.
G. Klingelhofer, R. V. Morris, B. Bernhardt, C. Schroder, D. S. Rodionov, P. A. de Souza Jr., A. Yen, R. Gellert, E. N. Evlanov, B. Zubkov, et al. (2004)
Science 306, 1740-1745
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