21 February 2018

Sol 1972: Finishing Up Observations of Ogunquit Beach

Posted by Ryan Anderson

Tosol we planned to finish up our suite of observations on the ‘Ogunquit Beach’ sand sample that was off-loaded from the rover over the weekend. As described in yesterday’s blog, the rover had dumped two piles of the Ogunquit Beach sample – a pre-sieved and post-sieved portion – on the ground in front of us. Because we spent yestersol observing the pre-sieved dump pile with MAHLI and APXS, we are now ready to blast that pile around with ChemCam‘s laser, which we will do in today’s plan!

We will also continue to collect observations to characterize the bedrock in front of us. We have planned several APXS and MAHLI observations on the area around ‘Lake Orcadie.’ The small offsets between these data and previous measurements will enable us to understand small scale variability in the chemistry of the target. We will also take an additional ChemCam LIBS observation and associated Mastcam documentation image of a bedrock target ‘Peterculler.’

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory