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14 June 2018
Sol 2082: A New MAHLI selfie
The major dust storm that caused the solar-powered Opportunity rover, on the other side of Mars, to shut down has somewhat darkened the skies over Gale Crater, but is not expected to seriously affect Curiosity’s operations.
13 June 2018
Sol 2081: "Just a Bunch of Dirt"
‘You have to get rid of that video–it just shows a bunch of dirt!’ I got on the phone and calmly explained that the offending sequence was in fact the very first Mars-landing video.
12 June 2018
Sol 2080: Communication Back to Normal
On Earth we have multiple means of communication-cell phone, text messages, land line, e-mail, and good old snail mail. On Mars the rover basically has three…
11 June 2018
Sol 2079: Quick change artist
Over the weekend, an error cropped up during a regular test of the high gain antenna actuators, leaving the antenna unavailable for uplink of today’s plan, but otherwise healthy.
10 June 2018
Sol 2076-2078: Dust on the horizon
Today we planned a weekend’s worth of activities for Curiosity. For our weekend plan, we have two main priorities: perform another analysis with CheMin on our Duluth drill sample and continue our campaign of dust storm monitoring.
9 June 2018
Sol 2075: It’s a SAMple party!
Today, Sol 2075, was a fairly straightforward day of planning, as most of the plan will be devoted to carrying out a methane experiment with our SAM instrument to analyze an atmospheric sample.
6 June 2018
Sol 2074: And the Crowd Went Wild
Today we received the happy news that the SAM instrument received enough sample to conduct its ‘evolved gas’ analysis of the powdered rock from our ‘Duluth’ drill hole!
5 June 2018
Sol 2073: Another CheMin Analysis
The focus of Curiosity operations continues to be on the analysis of the Duluth drill sample.
4 June 2018
Sol 2070 – 2072: A very, Very, VERY good day on Mars
Every single day that the Curiosity team gets to go into work and operate a one-ton rover on the surface of Mars is a good day. But last Friday was not just your typical good day — it was a very, very, very good day.
Sol 2072: The Great Martian Bake Off
An EGA basically involves baking the powdered rock sample in a several hundred degree oven, and then measuring the amount and composition of gases that are liberated.
