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4 October 2018
Geology – It’s like Investigating a Crime Scene
Sometimes planetary geology is like forensics. We are presented with a crime scene: Something broke down the original igneous rock, and made all those clays, veins and hematite nodules.
19 September 2018
Sols 2175-2176: Tell Us More, We Want to Help!
Over the past few days, engineers here at JPL have been working to address an issue on Curiosity that is preventing it from sending much of the science and engineering data stored in its memory. The rover remains in its normal mode and is otherwise healthy and responsive.
17 September 2018
Sols 2172-2174: Who’d Have Thought That Ridge Rocks Could Be So Hard
Last night we learned that our drill attempt on ‘Inverness’ was not successful, reaching only 4 mm into the rock. Today’s tactical team bounced back from this news and quickly assembled a plan to move on.
15 September 2018
Sols 2170-2171: Go for Drill at Inverness!
Although drill campaigns can take up to two weeks to complete, we are starting to look ahead, thinking of our next potential drill site. Mastcam multispectral images taken on sol 2171 will be used to help us decide which direction to head in next!
11 September 2018
Sols 2168-2169: Starting the drill campaign at "Inverness"
In the weekend plan Curiosity drove to an area that the team thought would be a good location for the next drill site on Vera Rubin Ridge. The drive was a success, and there is a block named ‘Inverness’ in the center of the workspace that was selected to be the next drill target.
9 September 2018
Sol 2165 – 2167: It always looks grayer on the other side!
Curiosity’s last plan didn’t quite get our intrepid rover close enough to our next potential drill location in the gray bedrock that is visually distinct on this part of Vera Rubin Ridge.
6 September 2018
Sols 2163-2164: Things that go Bump…
In our case, the Curiosity rover! The main focus of our 2-sol (sol – martian day) plan today is to bump (drive ~15 m) the rover into place for an attempt at drilling an interesting grey coloured patch of bedrock, identified from orbit within the Jura member of the Murray formation on the Vera Rubin Ridge, referred to as ‘Loch Eriboll.’
4 September 2018
Sols 2159-2162: Lots of Bits!
Curiosity’s plan for the weekend is extra large – 4 sols and almost 3 gigabits of data! We planned 4 sols due to the Labor Day weekend, and the hefty data volume is courtesy of extra downlink from two special orbiters.
3 September 2018
Sols 2157-2158: I’ll Take the Quela To Go, Please!
Today in Gale Crater, Curiosity begins with a short (but sweet) science block that utilizes ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam to observe the Martian surface and atmosphere.
30 August 2018
Sol 2156: The Story of Stoer
After an extremely productive couple of weeks, we are finishing up our work at Stoer! We’ll take some quick ChemCam and Mastcam observations of the tailings dump pile tosols before packing up and starting our drive up the ridge towards our next drill location.
