8 April 2019

Sol 2372: Drill Success at Aberlady!

Posted by Ryan Anderson

Our drill attempt at target ‘Aberlady’ this weekend was a success! In today’s plan we are continuing our investigation of Aberlady and the surrounding areas and preparing to deliver our drilled sample to our onboard instruments.

We’ll kick off the Sol 2372 plan with a short science block to analyze 2 targets with ChemCam: the inside of the drill hole (Aberlady) and a nearby bedrock target ‘Mayar.’ We’ll also use Navcam to conduct a dust devil observation.

The next step in our drill campaign is to determine if we collected powdered rock sample and whether it is behaving as expected. Today, we’ll drop off small portions of the sample onto the workspace in front of us and on the SAM inlet cover. We’ll use Mastcam to take images before and after these drop-offs; this will help us characterize our ability to deliver portions of the sample we received from Aberlady to the rover’s laboratories.

Written by Rachel Kronyak, Planetary Geologist at University of Tennessee