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7 June 2017
Sol 1720: Rough Road Ahead
I was the Surface Properties Scientist, or SPS on staff today. The SPS has an interesting job, in that the SPS helps Rover Planners (called RPs) assess the terrain around the rover with safety in mind, first and foremost.
Sol 1721: An easier planning day
MSL drove 26 meters on Sol 1720, as planned, to a location with blocks of bedrock in the arm workspace. Because the rover climbed another 3 meters in elevation, contact science has top priority for today’s plan, with driving next in priority.
5 June 2017
Sol 1719: Wait and Hurry Up!
Today was an interesting day of planning: because of an issue with the computer system responsible for processing data once it is received on Earth, Curiosity’s images and other data from Sol 1718 didn’t arrive until well into today’s planning. That meant that we had to keep the plan simple and respond rapidly once the data did arrive. It also meant that we had plenty of time to choose our …
4 June 2017
Sols 1715-1717: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right
Curiosity left no stone unturned, unshot or unbrushed as she wrapped up observations at the stand of gray-toned rocks she arrived at on Sol 1712. We added to yesterday’s rich observations of gray-toned rocks by brushing a nodule-rich target, ‘Timber Point,’ to give MAHLI and APXS as clear a look as possible of the target’s texture and chemistry.
Sols 1718: Looking East
We are beginning to turn toward the east and southeast as we approach Vera Rubin Ridge with the Curiosity rover. After a busy and successful plan over the weekend, we weighed our priorities between using APXS to study the bedrock we’re driving over or drive farther along our path.
31 May 2017
Sol 1714: Let’s try that again
Unfortunately the Sol 1713 activities were not uplinked due to an issue at the DSN station, so today’s plan is focused on recovering the activities that were planned yesterday. The good news is that we’ll be in the same location for the start of the weekend plan, so we’ll be able to add some additional contact science targets at this interesting site.
25 May 2017
Sols 1707-1708: When Mars Gives You Lemons, Calibrate Your Instruments
After Curiosity’s 14.6 m drive, the GEO group decided against arm activities due to a lack of compelling targets and in deference to making the next drive longer. So GEO science activities relied on Mastcam and ChemCam. On Sol 1707, ChemCam will capture a raster of the ‘White Cap Mountain’ bedrock target (the white bedrock left of center in the bottom quarter of the above Navcam image), as well as a …
21 May 2017
Sols 1702-1704: An island of science
The rover planners parked us in front of the one slab of outcrop – an island among ripples of sand – we could safely drive to from our Sol 1700 position, setting us up to continue our exploration of the Murray formation.
Planning Sol 1705 – 1706: Rocky Road
Curiosity is continuing to make progress towards Vera Rubin Ridge along the Mt Sharp ascent route. We planned two sols today, Sol 1705 and Sol 1706. On our first sol, we will kick off the day with some remote sensing science on the bedrock in front of us, including ChemCam observations of targets ‘Turtle Island’, ‘Stony Brook’, and ‘Dike Peak’. Turtle Island is typical Murray bedrock, Stony Brook has an …
18 May 2017
Sols 1700-1701: Optical depth measurements
Curiosity continues towards Vera Rubin Ridge with a 48 m drive. GEO decided for the touch-and-go option (instead of lengthening the drive like on Sol 1684) using APXS and MAHLI on “Ripple Pond,” a typical member of the Murray formation.
