You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
16 May 2016
Sols 1344-1345: Touch and Go
The drive planned last weekend completed successfully, moving MSL less than 6 meters into position for contact science on the rocks broken by the rover wheels. Planning is restricted this week, so we are planning 2 sols’ worth of activities. The first sol (1344) includes a “touch and go” that requires extra Rover Planner staffing, as both arm activities and a drive are planned. It’s great to be able to …
15 May 2016
Sols 1341-1343: A change of plans
The MSL team was originally planning a long drive this weekend, but there was enough interest in the fresh rock surfaces exposed near the rover that we decided to investigate them instead. Before we could decide whether to “bump” to the rocks that were broken when the rover drove over them, we had to make sure they could be well imaged by MAHLI. Taking MAHLI images of nearly vertical faces …
11 May 2016
Sols 1339-1340: Two Mars Years!
Happy birthday, Curiosity! As of today, the rover has been on the surface of Mars for two Mars years (almost four Earth years)! To celebrate, we have a new press release discussing our ongoing environmental measurements. These sorts of systematic measurements become more useful the longer the rover is on the surface to collect them, because we can compare how conditions change from year to year. Of course, we had …
10 May 2016
Sols 1337-1338: Curiosity’s two-day arm challenge, followed by a selfie
Today’s two-sol plan is going to be quite an arm workout for Curiosity. Over the weekend, Curiosity transferred and sieved the “Okoruso” drill sample, and analyzed it with CheMin. That means that today’s plan is focused on arm activities and imaging the drill location. The plan starts by dumping the pre-sieved drill sample. Then we’ll use Mastcam to image the dump pile and drill site. Next, we’ll target the drill …
9 May 2016
Sols 1334-1336: Successful drilling at Okoruso
Meet the latest drill hole on Mars: “Okoruso,” created on Sol 1332, seen in the above MAHLI image. Drilling activities went well on Sol 1332, so the weekend plan is focused on sieving the sample and dropping it off to CheMin for analysis. The plan starts with a short science block to acquire a ChemCam RMI image of the drill hole, and Mastcam stereo imaging of the pre-sieve dump location. …
4 May 2016
Sols 1332-1333: Drilling at Okoruso
Contact science activities on Sol 1330 went well, and we’re ready to drill at “Okoruso.” As seen in the above MAHLI image, this target looks like pretty typical Stimson bedrock, so it will be helpful to compare to the altered rock that we sampled at Lubango. Today’s two-sol plan is focused on drilling and MAHLI imaging on the first sol, with a lot of targeted remote sensing on the second …
3 May 2016
Sols 1330-1331: Characterizing the next drill site
Over the weekend, Curiosity completed the drilling investigation at Lubango, and we drove ~13 m to the “Ovitoto” area (note that this area is only ~4 m away from Cubango as the crow flies, but it took some maneuvering to get there). This area is composed of typical unaltered Stimson bedrock, which we’ll use to compare to the altered bedrock at Lubango. I was on duty as GSTL today, and …
1 May 2016
Sols 1326-1329: Wrapping Up at Lubango
After a nice rest on Sol 1325, Curiosity was charged up and ready for lots of science! On Sol 1326, we started off with multispectral Mastcam observations of the pile of dumped powder from the “Lubango” drill target and the targets “Rubikon” and “Ebony.” Then ChemCam had a passive observation of the dump pile, followed by active observations using the laser on Rubikon as well as “Ida” and “Lorelei.” Mastcam …
27 April 2016
Sol 1325: Taking it Easy
It’s been a busy few days of drilling and related activities, so the plan for sol 1325 is a pretty simple one to allow the rover’s batteries to recharge. There is a short science block with a ChemCam observation of the drill tailings at “Lubango” along with Mastcam documentation. After that, MAHLI will take a closer look at the targets “Lianshulu” and “Rubikon.” Other than routine environmental monitoring measurements by …
26 April 2016
Sol 1324: Power-constrained
As expected, the Sol 1323 data we needed for planning today were received later than usual, so tactical planning started 3 hours later than normal. This makes for a long day, especially for the European members of the MSL operations team. But the real challenge today is power–the drill-related activities that have been commanded lately require discharging the batteries more deeply than we usually do. So as SOWG Chair today, …
