22 November 2016

Sols 1528-1530: Fifteen Kilometers!

Posted by Ryan Anderson

Sol 1526 Navcam

Our weekend plan for Curiosity went as expected, including a ~16 meter drive which brings us to our next drill target: “Precipice.” That drive also brings our total drive distance from Bradbury Landing to just over 15 km! We have a three sol plan today as we head into the long holiday weekend and prepare for drilling next week.

On Sol 1528, Mastcam has a 3×10 mosaic to provide context for the drill site, followed by ChemCam images of the drill bit and a MARDI twilight image of the ground beneath the rover. On the following sol, Navcam and Mastcam start the day with a set of atmospheric observations to watch for dust devils and measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere. After that, ChemCam has a passive sky observation, followed by active measurements of the targets “Thomas Bay,” “The Anvil,” and “The Ovens.” Mastcam then has a change detection observation on the targets “Hulls Cove” and “Big Heath” along with documentation of the ChemCam targets, including the AEGIS target from sol 1526. Mastcam and Navcam will then repeat some of the atmospheric observations from the morning.

In contrast to our busy Sol 1529, sol 1530 will be relatively quiet, with a focus on downlinking data and our normal background data collection from REMS and DAN.

by Ryan Anderson

Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the martian environment, communication relays and rover status