N.Y. Times report on Haematite.

There are some complications to this story. The second page is important reading. It states that in the airbag prints, the spectral signature of the supposedly coarse-grained haematite dissappears.

Now, in the simplistic interpretation, the regolith granules should be rich in haematite, or perhaps even pure resitant grains and flakes of haematite - a strong mineral. Yet they disappear on light loading.

It's possible that they are being pushed down into the dusty soil so completely that it closes over them and conceals them from view, but I feel that this is unlikely. For one, the regolith and the prints don't look like this. You see some scattered grains on some of the prints, but they seem to have rolled or been thrown into position, rather than being remnant grains that didn't get pushed into the soft dust.

Instead, I suspect theat the Haematite is just a thin coating on dusty garain aggregates which crush to powder when loaded - leaving barely a trace of the Haematite signature.

The Mossbauer spectrometer results will be interesting - for this, the baseplate needs to be pressed against the target. If this crushes the grains and destroys/the haematite signature, then I think there will be some major rethinking required for models of aqueous origin.

If not, then the model can continue. The next few days will be VERY interesting, IMHO...