With the weekend plan, we officially started our drill campaign on the target “Sebina,” so we will be staying in this location through the week. On Sol 1491 we dumped out the post-sieve sample from our previous drill hole at “Quela,” and did some brushing on Sebina, followed by APXS and MAHLI imaging.

On Sol 1492, the rover did a lot of remote sensing, starting off with an early morning suite of atmospheric observations using Navcam and Mastcam. Mastcam also had a 360 degree mosaic from our current location. In the afternoon on Sol 1492, Mastcam had a multispectral observation of Sebina and a couple more atmospheric dust measurements. ChemCam then had a passive sky observation, followed by analysis of Sebina as well as to concretions named “Musserra” and “Mussende.” This was followed by a Mastcam documentation mosaic of all three targets.

And that was all! Even though this was a weekend plan which would normally cover three sols, Sunday was a “soliday” which means there was no planning. This allows our schedule on Earth to sync back up with Mars so we can plan every day this week.

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