... It looks like a pile of rocks to me.
(To be precise, I'm actually a geophysicist, but I did my degree via geology and I work in a geological environment and do geological jobs all the time, so I'm just splitting hairs there)
As for the rock:-
It's a single coherent mass of rock, but heavily fractured. All the rocks we see in Gusev are either intensely fractured or are fragments from a larger mass. This fracturing is the result of 2+ billion years of impact bombardment *without* the cementation processes that on the Moon form solid breccias from loose fragments.
It exhibits different degreesof dust covering. The colour image referred to (
There are signs of wind erosion - angular ventifacts and some local fluting (undulating inverse ripples)
There doesn't appear to be anything remarkable about this rock, other than it being on Mars! :-)
I'd bet a slab or beer that it's a basalt, in the broad sense of the word.
Space/Science » in reply to Geologist Input?
Well, I'm not actually a geologist, but...
