Adirondack (Mars)

Adirondack is the nickname for Mars Exploration Rover "Spirit"'s first target rock. Scientists chose Adirondack to be "Spirit"s first target rock after considering another, called Sashimi, that would have been a shorter, straight-ahead drive. "Spirit" traversed the sandy martian terrain at Gusev Crater to arrive in front of this football-sized rock on January 18, 2004, just three days after it successfully rolled off the lander.
Scientists named the angular rock after the Adirondack mountain range in New York.
The name "Adirondacks" is an Anglicized version of the Mohawk "ratirontaks", meaning "they eat trees", a derogatory name which the Mohawk historically applied to the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Adirondack Mountains; when food was scarce, the Algonquians would eat the buds and bark of trees.
The rock was selected as "Spirit"s first target because its dust-free, flat surface was ideally suited for grinding. Clean surfaces also are better for examining a rock's top coating. "Spirit" also returned microscopic images and Mössbauer spectrometer readings of Adirondack taken the day before the rover developed computer and communication problems on January 22, 2004. Both are unprecedented investigations of any rock on another planet. The microscopic images indicate Adirondack is a hard, crystalline rock. The peaks large and small in Adirondack's electromagnetic spectrum reveal that the minerals in the rock include olivine, pyroxene and magnetite - a common composition in volcanic basalt rocks on Earth.
Adirondack turned out to be typical of the other rocks on the plains. "Spirit" rover's instruments determined that Adironack and other rocks of the plains contain the minerals pyroxene, olivine, plagioclase, and magnetite. These rocks can be classified in different ways. The amounts and types of minerals make the rocks primitive basalts—also called picritic basalts. The rocks are similar to ancient terrestrial rocks called basaltic komatiites. Rocks of the plains also resemble the basaltic shergottites, meteorites which came from Mars. One classification system compares the amount of alkali elements to the amount of silica on a graph; in this system, Gusev plains rocks lie near the junction of basalt, picrobasalt, and tephite. The Irvine-Barager classification calls them basalts.
Adirondack has been very slightly altered, probably by thin films of water because they are softer and contain veins of light colored material that may be bromine compounds, as well as coatings or rinds. It is thought that small amounts of water may have gotten into cracks inducing mineralization processes.
Coatings on the rocks in the plains may have occurred when rocks were buried and interacted with thin films of water and dust.
One sign that they were altered was that it was easier to grind these rocks compared to the same types of rocks found on Earth.

Pieszyce

Pieszyce () is a town in Dzierżoniów County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is the seat of the administrative district (gmina) Gmina Pieszyce.
Geography.
It is situated in the historic Lower Silesia region on the northern slopes of the Owl Mountains, approximately southwest of Dzierżoniów, and southwest of the regional capital Wrocław.
As of 2019, the town has a population of 7,123.
History.
The "Waldhufendorf" settlement in the Duchy of Silesia, one of the duchies of fragmented Poland, was first mentioned in a 1250 deed. The first church was built in the 13th century. In 1291 it fell with the lands of Świdnica to the Silesian Duchy of Jawor, which upon the death of Duke Bolko II the Small in 1368 was ruled by the Kings of Bohemia.
From the 16th century onwards, Peterswaldau developed as a centre of weaving. The Lords of Perswaldau had a castle erected in 1617, which was rebuilt in a Baroque style in 1710. The Polish-Saxon cabinet minister Erdmann II of Promnitz acquired the estates in 1721 and gained the privilege to fabricate woven goods by Emperor Charles VI.
With most of Silesia, Peterswaldau was annexed from Habsburg-ruled Bohemia by Prussia after the First Silesian War in 1742. In 1765 the lordship passed to Count Christian Frederick of Stolberg-Wernigerode, whose descendants held the estates until their expulsion in 1945. The social hardship of the population in the course of the 19th century industrialisation was perpetuated by the famous Silesian author Gerhart Hauptmann in his play "The Weavers", which is set in Peterswaldau. From 1871 the village was part of Germany and in 1945, after Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II, it became again part of Poland. It was granted town rights in 1962. From 1975 to 1998 Pieszyce was in Wałbrzych Voivodeship.
Sights.
The most significant historic landmarks of the town are:
Twin towns – sister cities.
See twin towns of Gmina Pieszyce.