QUESTION:
Have you seen any evidence of surface disturbance from the lander bouncing
and rolling, or from the backshell / parachute assembly? It seems that
movement would help determine the mass of any rocks moved by the landing
process or uncover material that had been protected from the sun.

ANSWER from David Mittman on July 16th,1997;
There are areas of disturbed soil near the lander where it is obvious that
the airbag retraction has scraped the soil. No indication of the location of
the parachute/backshell assembly has been found, although one could hazard a
guess as to which direction it would lie.

David Mittman

ANSWER from Art Thompson and Steve Stolper on July 24, 1997:
The images coming from the spacecraft clearly show striations in the soil
caused by the retraction of the airbags.  It turns out that the rover has
the ability to lock one wheel and drag it across the surface (abraiding the
surface). We can then conduct soil mechanics experiments and obtain APXS
data.

Art Thompson & Steve Stolper

ANSWER from Robert Manning on August 1, 1997:
It looks like the lander "rolled" in from the east (we can see disturbed
soil in spots about 7-10 meters away in that direction). It also looks like
the lander rolled a bit west and came back a few feet before coming to rest
(base petal down!). Interestingly, a couple of days ago (late July) we
finally found evidence of the backshell in the IMP images. Before landing, I
had hoped that the backshell would have been close enough for the rover to
drive to. Unfortunately, at around 1200 meters, the backshell is a bit too
far away for the rover. Still, I am happy that we can see it at all. The
orientation turned out to be just right to see the white outer portion of
the backshell at that distance. The inside of this 9 ft cone is black, the
outside is thermal protection material painted white - just like the
shuttle's big fuel tank used to be. It is possible too that the whitish
parachute is draped over it and we see the parachute cloth against the red
Mars background. We can't be certain. I hope that MGS will be able to take
high resolution pictures of this area from space in the next year. Maybe
they will be able to see the parachute in the pictures!

Wouldn't it be very interesting for future astronauts (maybe one of you?) to
someday go to Ares Vallis and bring some of this stuff home? Even if you do,
I suspect that most of this hardware we built will remain at this spot for
very, very long time to come.

ANSWER from Mike Mellon on August 4, 1997:
It's not obvious from the available images which direction the lander rolled
in from on its air bags. Th IMP camera can image the surface in all
directions around the spacecraft; however, attention is focused on the
activities of the rover, which has been operating east of the lander. It is
unlikely that any rock would have been broken by the landing, since the
force required to break a rock would certainly be more than adequate to
puncture the air bags. On the other hand the disruption and compression of
soil under the rolling space craft would provide information about the
mechanical properties of martian soil, which is also of geologic interest.
Full analysis of all the images will take years.

Mike Mellon