Dawn’s look at asteroid Vesta as the spacecraft heads off to Ceres. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA
As Dawn says goodbye to Vesta — where the spacecraft has been orbiting for over a year — here are two final views of the giant asteroid, which are among the last taken by the spacecraft, NASA said.
“Dawn has peeled back the veil on some of the mysteries surrounding Vesta, but we’re still working hard on more analysis,” said Christopher Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator at UCLA. “So while Vesta is now out of sight, it will not be out of mind.”
The first is a black-and-white mosaic that shows a full view of the giant asteroid, created by synthesizing some of Dawn’s best images.
Below is a color-coded relief map of Vesta’s northern hemisphere, from the pole to the equator. It incorporates images taken just as Dawn began to creep over the high northern latitudes, which were dark when Dawn arrived in July 2011.
These color-shaded relief maps show the northern and southern hemispheres of Vesta, derived from images analysis. Colors represent distance relative to Vesta’s center, with lows in violet and highs in red. In the northern hemisphere map on the left, the surface ranges from lows of minus 13.82 miles (22.24 kilometers) to highs of 27.48 miles (44.22 kilometers). Light reflected off the walls of some shadowed craters at the north pole (in the center of the image) was used to determine the height. In the southern hemisphere map on the right, the surface ranges from lows of minus 23.65 miles (38.06 kilometers) to 26.61 miles (42.82 kilometers).
The shape model was constructed using images from Dawn’s framing camera that were obtained from July 17, 2011, to Aug. 26, 2012. The data have been stereographically projected on a 300-mile-diameter (500-kilometer-diameter) sphere with the poles at the center.
The three craters that make up Dawn’s “snowman” feature can be seen at the top of the northern hemisphere map on the left. A mountain more than twice the height of Mount Everest, inside the largest impact basin on Vesta, can be seen near the center of the southern hemisphere map on the right.
These images are the last in Dawn’s Image of the Day series during the cruise to Ceres. A full set of Dawn data is being archived at http://pds.nasa.gov/ .
Future human Mars mission preview! The team from Mars Express put this great video together which shows what Mars looks like from above, during an elliptical orbit. They created it using 600 individual still images captured by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), and it shows the view from a visiting spacecraft’s slow descent from high above the planet, then speeds up during closest approach, and then slows down again as the orbital distance increases.
A Mars Express VMC camera image of Mars from May, 2012. Credit: ESA
Visible are giant Martian volcanoes, a quick glimpse of the ice-covered South Pole, and Mars terminator as day turns to night. Then quickly daylight returns, and then the visitor sees the North Pole, followed by the long climb away from the planet over the equator. Finally, at the end of the movie — look closely! –the disk of Phobos can be seen crossing over Mars.
The VMC is being used almost like a Mars webcam! It consists of a small CMOS-based optical camera, which can be fitted with an on-pixel RGB color filter for color images. So, it is basically an ordinary camera, but it is in an extraordinary place! It originally provided simple, low-tech images of Beagle lander separation — a mission which, unfortunately failed and crashed. But the VMC has been resurrected to provide views of the Red Planet. It’s not a scientific instrument, but it does provide fantastic views of Mars – including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth.
The images used here were taken during Mars Express’ 8,194th orbit of Mars on May 27, 2010 between 02:00 and 09:00 UTC (04:00-11:00 CEST).
Caption: Artist’s Concept, Space Exploration Vehicle Use Comparison. Credit: NASA
Conspiracy theories abound that the Apollo landings all took place on a film set in California, but today NASA’s Desert RATS team begins a mission to asteroid Itokawa. They will land, rove and even undertake spacewalks, without ever stepping foot out of their home base at Johnson Space Center in Texas. This is no hoax however, but a simulated mission to test out NASA’s audacious plan to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025.
The Desert RATS have been testing robots and other tools that could be used on future exploration missions since 1997, (this is their 15th mission) usually doing analog missions out in the field. “Desert” refers to the Arizona desert, where a lot of the team’s activities take place and “RATS” stands for “Research and Technology Studies.”
However, since they are now testing out a zero-G visit to an asteroid, the team will use mockups inside JSC’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, which offers a medley of tools and simulators that would be difficult to transport to a field test location.
For example, the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) is designed to both rove across a planetary surface on a wheeled chassis or fly in space using advanced propulsion systems. Four crew members will take it in turns to live in and operate the simulator to explore the asteroid.
The MMSEV can be put on a sled on an air-bearing floor to simulate the moves that the crew might feel during a real mission. There will also be a 50-second delay in voice transmission, going each way to simulate the light-speed travel time between Earth and the asteroid.
The crew can also undertake spacewalks using ARGOS (Active Response Gravity Offload System) an overhead gantry crane system that simulates the reduced gravity environment. In reality nothing would stop astronauts from just floating off the surface but NASA is thinking about using jetpacks, tethers, bungees, nets or spiderwebs to allow them to float just above the surface attached to a smaller mini-spaceship.
A team of scientists from the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate will ensure proper scientific methods are applied to asteroid sample collection techniques throughout the 10 day mission.
The mission is slated to run until August 30th or 31st. Find out more here or follow the NASA Desert RATS team on Twitter
Second image caption: ARGOS can be used to make spacewalkers feel as though they weigh 1/6 of their weight, as they would on the moon, or 1/3, as on Mars. Photo credit: NASA
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image of Phoenix hanging from its parachute as it descended to the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
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Note: This article was updated on Aug. 3 with additional information.
The HiRISE camera crew on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will attempt an audacious repeat performance of the image above, where the team was able to capture an amazing shot of the Phoenix lander descending on a parachute to land on Mars’ north polar region. Only this time it will try to focus on the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover descending to touch down in Gale Crater. It will be all or nothing for the HiRISE team, as they get only one shot at taking what would likely be one of the most memorable images of the entire mission for MRO.
“We’re only making one attempt on MSL here,” Christian Schaller of the HiRISE team told Universe Today. “The EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) image is set up so that as MSL is descending, MRO will be slewing the HiRISE field of view across the expected descent path. The plan is to capture MSL during the parachute phase of descent.”
Schaller is the software developer responsible for the primary planning tools the MRO and HiRISE targeting specialists and science team members use to plan their images.
Last December, when Universe Today learned of this probable imaging attempt, HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen confirmed for us that, indeed, the team was working to make it happen. The preferred shot would be to “capture the rover hanging from the skycrane, but the timing may be difficult,” McEwen said.
It would take an impeccable – and fortuitous – sense of timing to get that shot, but since MSL’s EDL won’t happen on a precisely exact timetable, the HiRISE team will take their one shot and see what happens.
“We’ve been gradually updating the exact timing of the sequence over the past couple of weeks as the MSL navigation team, the MRO navigation team and the MRO flight engineering team refines that descent path and MRO slew,” Schaller said via email, “and we think we’ve pretty much got it nailed down at this point. I think it’s a real testament to NASA and its partners that we can even think about doing this.”
HiRISE will actually be taking two images, but the first is a “throwaway” warmup image taken about 50 minutes prior to MSL’s descent, designed to heat the camera’s electronics up to the preferred temperature for getting good image data.
“The warmup image we’re taking is a long-exposure throwaway that we’re taking on the night side of Mars,” Schaller explained. “It’s a 5,000 microsecond per line exposure, compared to a more typical 100 microsecond per line exposure during normal surface imaging. These warmup data will be useless, and we don’t even bother sending them back to Earth; we just dump them from the MRO filesystem once the exposure is complete.”
Schaller said the warmup image starts executing at 04:17 UTC/9:17 PM PDT. The real image starts executing at 05:09 UTC/10:09 PM PDT, centered on 10:16 PM as the time MSL and MRO navigation teams have determined MSL will pass through HiRISE’s field of view.
This image will be an approximately 500 microseconds per line exposure, to match the MRO’s slew rate.
Caption: Artist impression of MRO orbiting Mars. Credit: NASA
UPDATE (Aug. 3): In checking with McEwen, he said that Mars Express and Odyssey are NOT planning to image the descent, but they are supporting EDL via UHF relay, and the plans to use CTX has been dropped.
“HiRISE plans are to definitely attempt the image, unless there is a late upset to the MRO spacecraft,” McEwen said via email on August 3. “The engineers estimate we have a 60% chance of capturing MSL in our image.”
MRO’s Context Camera (CTX) will also be attempting to image Curiosity’s descent, as will NASA’s Mars Odyssey and ESA’s Mars Express and all the spacecraft have been performing special maneuvers to be aligned in just the right place – nearby to MSL’s point of entry into Mars’ atmosphere.
While Odyssey and Mars Express’ cameras may not have the resolving power to capture MSL itself, the powerful HiRISE camera does. However, it has a narrower field of view, so as much skill and planning as this requires, the team will need a little luck, too. But there’s also the CTX.
“CTX has a much larger field of view and will likely capture it,” McEwen said, “but at 20X lower resolution than HiRISE, which should still be good enough to detect the parachute.”
For those concerned about the fuel required for all these orbiters to reposition themselves just to take a few pictures, the expenditure is nothing that isn’t required anyway. All the spacecraft need to be in position to support MSL during the critical EDL event, and the images are pure extra-benefit, if not an incredible exercise for the imaging teams.
So while we’ll all be crossing our fingers for a successful landing for Curiosity, I’m on my way to find a rabbit’s foot or 4-leaf clover for HiRISE.
Since launching in November 2011, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has been on a 560 million-kilometer (350 million-mile) journey to the Red Planet, with landing scheduled for late Sunday August 5 or early Monday August 6, depending on where you live on Earth. The Curiosity rover has been tucked away cozily into a spacecraft for safekeeping during flight, but when it reaches Mars’ surface it will encounter tough and frigid conditions, all in the name of science. This is NASA’s fourth rover mission to Mars, and its goal is to determine the planet’s past — and present — potential for habitability. Want to know more? Here are some facts about Curiosity and the mission:
When will it land on Mars?
For us Earthlings, the Curiosity rover will land on Mars at 05:31 UTC on Aug. 6 (10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5, 1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) plus or minus a minute. This is Earth-received time, which includes one-way light time (13.8 minutes) for radio signal to reach Earth from Mars. The landing will be at about 3 p.m. local time at the Mars landing site.
How long does it take for the rover to get to Mars’ surface after it reaches the outer atmosphere?
About 7 minutes. Dubbed the “seven minutes of terror” by NASA, MSL will employ a parachute, landing rockets, a hovering sky crane, and other complicated mechanisms to help lower the rover to the surface of Mars.
Watch this video to learn more about the seven minutes of terror:
How big is the parachute?
The diameter of the parachute is 15 meters (51 feet). It is a supersonic parachute, the largest ever deployed on another world. The parachute can withstand 65,000 lbs of pressure, which is critical, as in the Martian atmosphere, once the parachute deploys, it will still be forced to cope with 9Gs of pressure. It is orange and white (the school colors of Caltech, home of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
How big are the spacecraft and the rover?
Cruise vehicle dimensions (cruise stage and aeroshell with rover and descent stage inside): Diameter: 4.5 meters (14 feet, 9 inches); height: 3 meters (9 feet, 8 inches)
Arm length: 2.1 meters (7 feet). The arm is capable of collecting powdered samples from rocks, scooping soil, preparing and delivering samples for analytic instruments, and brushing surfaces on the planet.
Wheel diameter: 0.5 meter (20 inches)
Mass: 3,893 kilograms (8,463 pounds) total at launch, consisting of 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) rover; 2,401-kilogram (5,293-pound) entry, descent and landing system (aeroshell plus fueled descent stage); and 539-kilogram (1,188-pound) fueled cruise stage.
How does the rover get its power for roving?
Multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator and lithium-ion batteries
What are the science instruments on board Curiosity?
10 instruments weighing a total of 75 kilograms (165 pounds), to do many of the tasks scientists do in a lab. Instead of sending samples back to Earth for humans to analyze, the Curiosity rover will thus be able to do laboratory tests right from the Martian surface. The instruments are:
Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, Chemistry and Camera, Chemistry and Mineralogy, Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, Mars Descent Imager, Mars Hand Lens Imager, Mast Camera, Radiation Assessment Detector, Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, and Sample Analysis at Mars
How many cameras are on Curiosity?
17 (some of which are part of the 10 science instruments)
When did Curiosity launch?
Nov. 26, 2011, 10:02 a.m. EST, from Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
Launch Vehicle: Atlas V 541 provided by United Launch Alliance
How far is Mars away from Earth?
Earth–Mars distance at launch: 204 million kilometers (127 million miles)
Earth–Mars distance on landing day: 248 million kilometers (154 million miles)
Total distance of travel, from Earth to Mars: About 567 kilometers (352 million miles)
How fast can Curiosity rove?
On average, the rover is expected to travel across the surface of Mars at about 30 meters (98 feet) per hour, based on power levels, slippage, steepness of the terrain, visibility, and other variables.
Where is Curiosity’s landing site?
Landing site: 4.6 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude, near base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, a layered mountain that rises 4.8 kilometers (3 miles). The mountain was named after planetary geologist Bob Sharp.
What will the weather be like at Gale Crater?
Expected near-surface atmospheric temperatures at landing site during primary mission: minus 90 C to zero C (minus 130 F to 32 F ). Basically, cold and windy with wind gusts of up to 144 km/h (90 mph) —as strong as some hurricane winds on Earth. Mars is home to dust storms and quickly moving whirlwinds known as dust devils.
How many possible landing sites did scientists considered before deciding on Gale Crater?
60. Gale Crater was chosen because it is thought to contain elements that are important to the search for the ingredients of life.
How long is the primary mission?
One Martian year. Because a day on Mars is longer than one on Earth—39 minutes and 35.244 seconds longer, to be exact—a Martian year is equal to 98 weeks, or 687 days, on Earth.
How much does this mission cost?
$2.5 billion, including $1.8 billion for spacecraft development and science investigations and addition amounts for launch and operations.
Lead image caption: Curiosity completes Biggest Interplanetary Rocket Firing to Mars. Illustrations show (left) the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during its voyage from Earth to Mars and (right) the mission’s rover, Curiosity, working on Mars after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech
Second image caption: This computer-generated view based on multiple orbital observations shows Mars’ Gale crater as if seen from an aircraft northwest of the crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/UA
The Mars Science Laboratory will be seeking clues to the planetary puzzle about life on Mars, the Curiosity rover is one of the best-outfitted chemistry missions ever. Scientists say Curiosity is the next best thing to launching a team of trained chemists to Mars’ surface.
“The Mars Science Laboratory mission has the goal of understanding whether its landing site on Mars was ever a habitable environment, a place that could have supported microbial life,” says MSL Deputy Project Scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, who provides a look “under the hood” in this informative video from the American Chemical Society.
“Curiosity is really a geochemical experiment, and a whole laboratory of chemical equipment is on the rover,” says Vasavada. “It will drill into rocks, and analyze material from those rocks with sophisticated instruments.”
Curiosity will drive around the landing site at Gale Crater and sample the soil, layer by layer, to piece together the history of Mars, trying to determine if and when the planet went from a wetter, warmer world to its current cold and dry conditions.
The payload includes mast-mounted instruments to survey the surroundings and assess potential sampling targets from a distance, and there are also instruments on Curiosity’s robotic arm for close-up inspections. Laboratory instruments inside the rover will analyze samples from rocks, soils and the atmosphere.
The two instruments on the mast are a high-definition imaging system, and a laser-equipped, spectrum-reading camera called ChemCam that can hit a rock with a special laser beam, and using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, can observe the light emitted from the laser’s spark and analyze it with the spectrometer to understand the chemical composition of the soil and rock on Mars.
The tools on the turret at the end of Curiosity’s 2.1-meter-long (7-foot-long) robotic arm include a radiation-emitting instrument that reads X-ray clues to targets’ composition and a magnifying-lens camera. The arm can deliver soil and powdered-rock samples to an instrument that uses X-ray analysis to identify minerals in the sample and to an instrument that uses three laboratory methods for assessing carbon compounds and other chemicals important to life and indicative of past and present processes.
The three methods are an evolved gas experiment, which uses a mass spectrometer to look for potential long chain organic molecules on Mars; CheMin, an X-ray diffraction experiment to determine mineralogy; and an Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity’s robotic arm, like its predecessors on the arms of all previous Mars rovers, will identify chemical elements in rocks and soils.
In total Curiosity has 10 different instruments on board the roving laboratory, and test results from these instruments will pave the way for future Mars missions, and may provide insight in the search for life on other planets.
Image caption: Artist depiction of the Curiosity rover on Mars. Credit: NASA
Curiosity made a risky landing that was partly made possible from learning from mistakes, according to a NASA official. Credit: NASA
Imagine if you were tucked away inside the Mars Science Laboratory backshell, just like the Curiosity rover. What would you see as you approached Mars? Bill Dunford from Riding With Robots on the High Frontier wanted to know the same thing. “I was wondering what Mars would look like if you could physically ride along,” he wrote. “If you were somehow onboard the spacecraft that’s carrying the rover, and you had a window to look through, what would you be able to see?”
To find out, he took advantage of NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System website. This amazing tool creates realistic simulated views based on real data, and allows you to travel to any planet, moon or spacecraft across time and space, in 3D and in real time. It is absolutely awesome and very fun to play with! Bill created the video above by using Eyes on the Solar System, which provides a great look at the view approaching Mars.
Then, Bill also used Eyes on the Solar System to follow Curiosity down to the surface and view the landing, which, if all goes well on 10:31 p.m. PDT on August 5th (05:31 UTC on Aug. 6), should look something like this:
Of course, no one will be there on Mars to see it happen, and we won’t know for at least 14 minutes after the fact if it happened successfully. So consider yourself lucky to have this sneak peak!
See more screenshots and information at Riding With Robots, and check out Bill’s one-page “Cheat Sheet” which provides a quick guide to the mission and the landing, with links to all sorts of information.
Caption: Southern rim of Giordano Bruno crater seen obliquely by LROC. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
At the 2012 Lunar Science Forum going on this week at the NASA Lunar Science Institute, scientist Mark Robinson presented some new stunning images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s cameras (LROC), including this oblique view Giordano Bruno crater, and a wonderful video (below) that allows viewers to “barnstorm” over the crater to witness the stark beauty of this impact basin.
“I could spend weeks and months looking at the preserved materials in the crater,” Robinson said, adding that views like this are helping scientists to understand the impact process. “Until astronauts visit Giordano Bruno, this gives a view about as close as you can get to standing on the surface to the west of the crater.”
Robinson is the Principal Investigator for LROC, and in his talk today said all systems on LROC are working nominally. “That’s NASA-speak for everything is fantastic,” he joked.
With the wide angle camera, LROC has mapped the entire Moon nearly 33 times. “Every map has a different photometric geometry, so this is not a redundant dataset,” Robinson said, adding that the different lighting provides different ways to study the Moon. “And to be able to do follow-up observations, I can’t tell you how great it is.”
Just about every month, the science team is able to take new mosaics of both the north and south pole, and they’ve also found 160 pits – lunar caves – so far. These caves with “skylights” are intriguing because they would offer potential protective habitats for future lunar explorers.
Now in its extended mission, LRO is still going strong, and has provided incredible details of the lunar surface. LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak said since the start of the mission, LRO has uploaded 325 terabytes of data into the Planetary Data System, the digital storehouse for NASA science mission, through June 2012.
Caption: Close-up detail of the rim of Giordano Crater. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
“Thanks to LRO, the Moon’s topography is now better understood than the Earth, since two-thirds of Earth is covered by water,” Vondrak said.
But both scientists agrees LRO is just getting started.
“The Moon is one of the most engaging bodies in the Solar System and we’ve still got a lot of work to do,” Robinson said
Robinson suggests scrolling through all of the details of this beautiful impact crater by looking at the full-resolution version of Giordano Crater — “not to be missed!” he said. Also, the full resolution version of the video can be downloaded here.
Several gorgeous images are in this week’s update from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This lovely image shows the cliffs at the edges of huge ice sheet at the North Pole of Mars. These cliffs are about 800 meters (2,600 feet) high, and the ice sheet is several kilometers thick at its center. This is a great spot to look for ice avalanches that HiRISE has captured previously. The HiRISE team said that the slopes of these cliffs are almost vertical, plus dense networks of cracks cover the icy cliff faces making it easier for material to break free. The team regularly monitors sites like this to check for new blocks that have fallen. You can look for yourself to see if any avalanches have occurred since the last image was taken of this area, almost exactly one Martian year ago.
The HiRISE scientists monitor these regions to help in understand the climatic record stored in the ice sheet itself.
What else did HiRISE see this week?
These cool-looking dunes look reminiscent of Pac-Man, and they might even be moving across the surface of Mars! They are approximately 100 meters across and are traversing a bumpy, hard terrain, pushed across the surface by the winds on Mars. The HiRISE team will take more images of this dune field in subsequent passes to determine whether these dunes are really moving.
This image shows a gullied crater in the Southern mid-latitudes with light-toned deposits near the center of its floor, and two areas of collapsed terrain at the northern and southern edges of the crater floor.
For more information on each of these images, click on them to see the original page on the HiRISE website, or go to the HiRISE website to see all the wonderful images from Mars.
What’s a Mars rover to do when there’s not enough power to rove? Take pictures. LOTS of pictures! This wonderful new panoramic view of the Opportunity rover’s stopping place this past Mars winter, Greeley Haven, is composed of 817 images taken between Dec. 21, 2011, and May 8, 2012. It shows fresh rover tracks and the rim of an ancient impact crater, Endeavour, which awaits more explorations from Opportunity. You’ll want to click and see a bigger version of it here.
But to get the full effect, check out this great interactive sphere of the panorama put together by John O’Connor of the NASATech website!
The images were taken with the color camera mounted on the mast of Oppy, providing a sense of sitting on top of the rover and taking in the view. This is actually a false color image, which emphasizes the difference between the materials.
“The view provides rich geologic context for the detailed chemical and mineral work that the team did at Greeley Haven over the rover’s fifth Martian winter, as well as a spectacularly detailed view of the largest impact crater that we’ve driven to yet with either rover over the course of the mission,” said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, Pancam lead scientist.
Opportunity has recently reached a milestone: On July 2, Opportunity reached its 3,000th Martian day, or Sol. You can read a great write-up of the accomplishment at the Road to Endeavour blog by Stu Atkinson, which includes interviews of rover drivers Scott Maxwell and Paolo Bellutta.
Stu also compiled this mosaic close-up of a RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) hole drilled by Oppy into a rock called “Grasburg.”
Opportunity has recently started to take short drives coming off the long Martian winter, and the team notes in the latest update that the rover has been benefiting from solar array dust cleaning events, which increase the daily energy production: as of Sol 3001 (July 3, 2012), the solar array energy production was 577 watt-hours. That’s great news for future drives and the longevity of the long-lived rover, which has been on Mars since 2004. Truly, Oppy is the Energizer Bunny of rovers!
Lead image caption: This full-circle scene combines 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
Second image caption: A close-up look at a hole drilled by Opportunity’s RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool). Mosaic of 4 microscopic imager photos by Stu Atkinson.
