You are browsing the archive for Curiosity.
21 March 2016
Sol 1289: Third time’s the charm?
The science that we planned over the weekend went smoothly, and we acquired some beautiful MAHLI and Mastcam images. However, the drive that was planned for Sol 1288 did not occur because the rover determined that a planned arm move would exceed a safety limit.. Because this fault is understood, we are going to try once again to drive onto a ridge just north of the rover. Today’s plan includes …
20 March 2016
Sols 1286-1288: Blame it on the leprechauns
St. Patrick’s Day on Mars didn’t quite go as planned. Yesterday we planned a ~15 m drive to a nearby ridge, but we came in this morning to find that the drive didn’t occur (blame it on the leprechauns?). In reality, we can blame it on a short in the RTG, which precluded the drive. This fault has occurred several times previously. Because the fault is understood, we were able to …
17 March 2016
Sol 1285: Still driving across the Naukluft Plateau
Curiosity is still working her way across the Naukluft Plateau. On Sol 1284 Curiosity drove ~27 m, which brings our total traverse distance to ~12,549 m. Today’s plan is fairly straightforward. In the morning, Curiosity will acquire Mastcam and ChemCam on targets named “Mulden” and “Koigab” to characterize the bedrock that we’ve been driving over. We’ll also take a Mastcam mosaic to investigate the local stratigraphy. Then Curiosity will continue …
Sol 1284: Driving Across the Plateau
MSL drove almost 40 meters over the rough terrain on the Naukluft plateau, as planned, and again there are many interesting features near the rover. Many of the rocks appear to have been abraded by windblown sand, resulting in some bizarre shapes in places. The chemical and morphological diversity of these nearby rocks will be sampled before the rover drives toward the west on Sol 1284: ChemCam and Mastcam will …
15 March 2016
Sol 1283: Driving over Stimson bedrock
The 26-meter drive planned for sol 1282 completed successfully, giving the rover nice views of interesting features in the Stimson unit. Some of these features appear to be the result of erosion by windblown sand and are the subject of a Right Mastcam 7×2 mosaic planned for Sol 1283. ChemCam will measure elemental chemistry at the edge of one of the bedrock blocks and Mastcam will acquire another mosaic of …
14 March 2016
Sol 1282: Up on the Plateau
I’m scheduled on tactical operations tomorrow, so I’m getting back up to speed on recent MSL activities today. The Sol 1281 drive completed as planned, crossing the Murray/Stimson contact at the edge of the Naukluft plateau. Now that we have a better view of the plateau, we are ready to start driving across it. But first, ChemCam and Mastcam will observe targets “Orupembe” and “Witvlei” on the bedrock in front …
13 March 2016
Sols 1279-1281: Climbing up onto Naukluft Plateau
It’s time to wrap up our investigation of the interesting nodules at the contact between the Murray and Stimson formations and resume driving! The weekend starts off focused mostly on contact science. On Sol 1279, APXS will analyze two neighboring locations on a group of nodules collectively called “Khomas,” and then on Sol 1280 APXS will analyze a third location on Khomas. MAHLI will collect supporting images, and will also …
11 March 2016
Sol 1278: Nodules: Take 2
Our APXS observation of the nodules in yesterday’s plan didn’t go exactly as planned: it was slightly misaligned with the nodule we were trying to analyze, so the measurement was mostly of the neighboring bedrock. That meant planning today started with a discussion of whether the chemistry from ChemCam was sufficient, or if we should spend another day and nail the APXS measurement as well. In the end we decided …
10 March 2016
Sols 1275-1276: Interesting Veins and Textures
The weekend drive went well, and put us in a great location for some contact science, right near the contact between the “Murray” and “Stimson” formations, with some interesting veins and textures in the nearby rocks. Given our nice location, we opted not to do any driving in the Sol 1275 plan and instead study the area in front of us. The Sol 1275 plan started off with a ChemCam …
5 March 2016
Sols 1273-1274: Driving up to the Naukluft Plateau
We are planning only 2 sols today because tactical operations will transition to nominal next week (working all 5 weekdays). On Sol 1273, Mastcam will acquire a multispectral image of the contact between the Murray and Stimson geologic units. This set of images, taken using all of the Mastcam filters, will be acquired just after noon, when the illumination of the contact should be better than in previous images. Then …
