3 March 2019

Sol 2338: Finishing up at Midland Valley

Posted by Ryan Anderson

Today we planned Sol 2238 chock full of science activities to finish up our observations at the ‘Midland Valley’ outcrop. We’ll primarily use our Mastcam and ChemCam instruments to take a closer look at some interesting rock targets in our workspace.

We’ll kick off our block of science activities on Sol 2238 with a Mastcam mosaic looking ahead of the rover, where the team identified an interesting area of fractured bedrock, pictured in the Navcam image above; we named this target area ‘Longhope.’ After that, we’ll use the ChemCam laser to analyze rock targets ‘Miller’ and ‘Cuttyhill.’ We’ll then take multispectral Mastcam images of targets Cuttyhill and another interesting rock named ‘Leslie.’ After our science observations, we’ll hit the dusty trail and drive towards our next bedrock-rich destination, an area called ‘Milltimber.’ To finish up the plan, we’ll take some post-drive images to survey our new parking spot and prepare for more science observations! We’ll also perform an atmosphere monitoring activity with Navcam to look for dust devils.

Written by Rachel Kronyak, Planetary Geologist at University of Tennessee