Lots of interesting stuff from the program for the 35th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March 15-19, 2004, Houston, TX.

Home page:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2004/

Downloads:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2004/lpsc2004.download.html

Thanks again to Gary for pointing the way...on the other hand, I'm gonna be spending waaaay too much time reading this stuff. Still digesting the set of articles posted earlier by Gary but here's a couple o' nuggets.

NOTES:

APXS Xray spectra of soils at Gusev and Meridiani are (nearly) identical. [#2172]

"Detection of olivine at three widely spaced locations on Mars implies it's widespread occurances on the planet and the inefficiency of alteration processes (at least in recent times) that would act to reduce this highly alterable mineral to weathering products." [#2184]

"We do not see a mineral assemblege (eg., higher proportion of ferric minerals) indicative of laucustrine deposits as of today." [#2184]

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Check this out about sulfur:

Rao, M.N., Wentworth S.J., McKay, D.S.
Chemical Weathering Records of Martian Soils Preserved in the Martian Meteorite EET79001 [#1501] Some impact melt glasses in Martian soil which resembles Viking and Pathfinder soils. Mixed sulfates and sulfides occur in them.

ftp://www.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2004/full26.pdf

NOTES & EXCERPTS:

"...these glasses yield large sulfur abundances due to the occurence of secondary mineral phases such as sulfates produced during acid-sulfate weathering of the regolith material near the martian surface."

There are some interesting scanning electron microscope (SEM) photos of very, very, very, extremely small spheres. Cool. I'd post them if I'd a better version of Adobe Acrobat.

"...results suggest that sulfur may occur as mixtures of sulfates and sulfides in some regions near the Martian surface under favorable conditions. Further work on these globules is in progress."

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The learning curve steepens.