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6 November 2018
Sol 2222: Déjà vu – Return to Lake Orcadie!
Our attempts to drill grey rock on the ‘Vera Rubin Ridge’ (VRR) continue. We are returning to an area known as ‘Lake Orcadie,’ the site of two previous drill attempts (Lake Orcadie and Lake Orcadie 2), which did not penetrate far enough into the bedrock to generate sufficient sample.
2 November 2018
Sols 2219-2221: Curiosity goes bump!
Yesterday Curiosity drove for the first time since sol 2166! Our intrepid explorer is truly back at it after a few weeks off due to the anomaly.
1 November 2018
Sol 2218: No Candy, Just Science for Curiosity
Curiosity had a good Halloween because it had resumed contact science. Today, Curiosity will have a targeted science block, drive, and then have an untargeted science block.
31 October 2018
Sol 2217: A BOO-tiful Halloween on Mars – Curiosity’s Return to Contact Science
Today was an exciting day for me as a member of the APXS team and filling the role of payload uplink lead, as Sol 2217 marked a return to contact science activities after our anomaly on Sol 2172.
29 October 2018
Sol 2216: A Windswept Workspace
It has been a over a month since we last looked at the ‘workspace,’ the region in front of the rover that the arm can reach, and there were some surprises in store for us!
27 October 2018
Sols 2213-2215: Eyes on the sky
The first sol kicks off with Mastcam tau, Navcam line of sight, and Navcam dust devil observations, to monitor the dust content in the atmosphere and search for dust devils.
25 October 2018
Sols 2211-2212: Getting Back into the Science Swing of Things!
While we are working toward understanding and recovering from the anomaly, Curiosity is slowly ramping back up into normal science operations.
22 October 2018
Recap of the Bagnold Dune Investigation
As Curiosity continues on her journey up Mount Sharp (the mound in the centre of Gale crater), rocks we encounter contain evidence for changing environmental conditions. The fine-grained mudstones of the Murray formation show us that lakes were present in the past, whilst the sandstones of the Stimson formation are evidence for ancient dune fields.
20 October 2018
Sol 2204: Curiosity science is baaaack!
Contrary to the ‘frightening’ title, the Curiosity team is excited that science operations are starting to resume! The real fright was when Curiosity had an anomaly on Sol 2172 which affected its memory.
8 October 2018
Crystal Balls May Show the Future, but Gypsum Crystals Tell Us About the Past
Some interesting features we’ve seen on Vera Rubin Ridge are small ‘swallowtail crystals’ often associated with the boundary between gray and red rocks on the ridge top. In thinking about these features…
