You are browsing the archive for Field Work.
7 July 2017
Sol 1748: Bumping to a sand ripple
Another touch-and-go was strategically planned for Curiosity today, and there is bedrock in the arm workspace, so the tactical science team selected a block named ‘Tupper Ledge’ for contact science.
6 July 2017
Sol 1747: Martian Fruit Salad
A high level of charge in Curiosity’s batteries after the long holiday weekend allowed us to prepare a bounty of science observations.
29 June 2017
Sol 1744: Up the Vera Rubin Ridge and Around the Sand Trap
I was the Surface Properties Scientist, or SPS, on staff again today. After completing a successful drive, Curiosity arrived at a nice workspace to carry out the weekend plan.
27 June 2017
Sols 1741-1743: "Cat Sized Island"
Last evening (June 27) between 8pm and 9pm PDT, Curiosity drove approximately 34 meters to the east to position herself just north of a large field of ripples on her way closer to ascending the iron oxide-bearing Vera Rubin Ridge. As Curiosity progresses towards the east, scientists back on Earth continue to look for opportunities to both gaze ahead towards interesting locations on the ridge itself, in addition to looking at the local rocks and sediment surrounding the rover.
Sol 1739 – 1740: More Touch and Go on the Way to Vera Rubin Ridge
This past weekend, Curiosity continued to journey east along the contact between the lower portion of Vera Rubin Ridge and the Murray formation with a drive that was a little over 20 m long.
24 June 2017
Sol 1736-1739: A Roving Astronomer
Curiosity has presented us with another beautiful workspace following a 16.6 meter drive. The majority of this week’s activities were focused on imaging Vera Rubin Ridge to observe its stratigraphic and structural relationship to the underlying Murray formation.
13 June 2017
Sol 1727 Blog: Little bit of everything
After a successful drive, our parking spot included a nice patch of Murray bedrock to allow us to perform contact science (MAHLI and APXS) in today’s plan. Our target for contact science is ‘Jones Marsh,’ a dark patch of the Murray that you can see just above the rightmost corner of Curiosity’s mast shadow in the Navcam image.
12 June 2017
Sol 1726: First Look at Vera Rubin Ridge
After great anticipation over the last few weeks, the drive in the current plan will bring us into position for stop 1 of our close look at the northern face of the hematite-bearing Vera Rubin Ridge. Mastcam will take a wide mosaic to begin documenting the sedimentary structure of the ridge.
11 June 2017
Sol 1725: Curiosity’s four day weekend
On most weekends, Curiosity dedicates part of her efforts to do contact science – deployment of APXS, MAHLI, and sometimes the DRT – because multi-sol weekend plans have more time and power to fit in these more complex activities. Last weekend, however, time and power were dedicated to a more rare, and more complex, activity – analysis of a previously-drilled rock sample by SAM.
8 June 2017
Sols 1722-1724: Leftovers for Dinner
Almost the entirety of the first two sols (1722 and 1723) are dedicated to a SAM analysis of a ‘doggy bagged’ sample from the Quela drill hole collected back in September 2016 (Sol 1464). Several times in the mission we’ve saved samples from our drill locations to analyze later.
