26 April 2016

Sol 1323: A new drill hole

Posted by Ryan Anderson

So far, all of the activities planned for last weekend have completed successfully, and we have a new drill hole on Mars!  The Sol 1323 plan is therefore to continue the Lubango drill campaign, transferring the sample to CHIMRA, sieving it, and delivering some of the <0.15 mm fraction to CheMinChemCam will shoot its laser at “Oshikati,” a potential target for the next drilling campaign, and Mastcam will acquire stereo images of a location that may be suitable for dumping the Lubango sample.  Overnight, CheMin will analyze the sample.

I’m SOWG Chair today, and the only significant problem I’ve had to deal with is how to fit everything we’d like to do into the available power. We were able to squeeze in all of the top-priority activities, so I’m happy with the plan!

by Ken Herkenhoff

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.