Hi all, The really strange thing from today's release of the high-resolution color photo is the MUD! Or something much like it. It shows up at the lower right and, a bit less prominently, on the lower left. The scientists interviewed had no idea what it was. These gunky dark cohesive impressions were caused when the airbags retracted, and the patterns are exactly like mud. One guess is that while no water is around to make mud, some peculiar mineral might have mud-like cohesion. In that case, I think the rover could be in deep trouble when it starts trundling around. It may not get much more than a foot or two from the lander, if this gunk clomps to the wheels and it gets stuck. But I expect that even in such a case, the instruments could analyze the stuff and we'd learn much about Mars that we didn't know. I too had my eyes nearly pop when I saw the "skull" or turtle shell thing in the first set of photos, then decided it was an optical illusion and just an "ordinary" Mars rock. Best wishes, Joe