26 May 2016
Sols 1353-1354: Clear sailing
The Sol 1352 post-drive imaging shows that, while there are sandy ripples ahead, there are enough rocky patches that the rover should not have any problem driving toward the southwest. This is what we were hoping, so we are planning to drive in that direction on Sol 1353. But first, Mastcam will acquire stereo mosaics of the Murray-Stimson contact and a couple areas toward the west with nodular features. After …
25 May 2016
Sol 1352: Scouting a path
We’d like to keep driving toward the southwest, but can’t see all of the terrain ahead from our current location. So the Sol 1352 plan includes a short drive to give us a better view. Before the rover moves, Mastcam will acquire a large stereo mosaic of the “Breckhorn” ridge in front of the vehicle and extend the left Mastcam mosaic of the “Fracture Town” area to the west. ChemCam …
23 May 2016
Sol 1350: Data processing delay
I’m SOWG Chair again today, and started browsing the latest data from MSL early this morning. To my dismay, the post-drive images that we expected to receive in time for planning today were not available! It turned out that the data were received on Earth, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter operations team had some problems processing and transferring it to us. We waited as long as we could for the …
Sols 1348-1349: A smoother route
Our drive on Sol 1346 was successful and brought us to a location with a view of the rugged ridges of the area we’ve been calling “Fracture Town”. In fact, from our current location, we decided that those ridges may be a bit too rough for comfort, so we are planning a slight change in course that will take us a bit south of our original path. The new path …
18 May 2016
Sols 1346-1347: Onward to Fracture Town
We are coming up on the edge of Naukluft plateau (again!). The plan for Sol 1346 starts off with ChemCam observations of the targets “Etusis” and “Etiro,” to continue measuring the variations in silica abundance around large fractures. Mastcam has a context image of these two targets, plus a mosaic looking ahead to an area we’ve been calling “Fracture Town.” After that, the rover will drive and do standard post-drive …
16 May 2016
Sols 1344-1345: Touch and Go
The drive planned last weekend completed successfully, moving MSL less than 6 meters into position for contact science on the rocks broken by the rover wheels. Planning is restricted this week, so we are planning 2 sols’ worth of activities. The first sol (1344) includes a “touch and go” that requires extra Rover Planner staffing, as both arm activities and a drive are planned. It’s great to be able to …
15 May 2016
Sols 1341-1343: A change of plans
The MSL team was originally planning a long drive this weekend, but there was enough interest in the fresh rock surfaces exposed near the rover that we decided to investigate them instead. Before we could decide whether to “bump” to the rocks that were broken when the rover drove over them, we had to make sure they could be well imaged by MAHLI. Taking MAHLI images of nearly vertical faces …
11 May 2016
Sols 1339-1340: Two Mars Years!
Happy birthday, Curiosity! As of today, the rover has been on the surface of Mars for two Mars years (almost four Earth years)! To celebrate, we have a new press release discussing our ongoing environmental measurements. These sorts of systematic measurements become more useful the longer the rover is on the surface to collect them, because we can compare how conditions change from year to year. Of course, we had …
10 May 2016
Sols 1337-1338: Curiosity’s two-day arm challenge, followed by a selfie
Today’s two-sol plan is going to be quite an arm workout for Curiosity. Over the weekend, Curiosity transferred and sieved the “Okoruso” drill sample, and analyzed it with CheMin. That means that today’s plan is focused on arm activities and imaging the drill location. The plan starts by dumping the pre-sieved drill sample. Then we’ll use Mastcam to image the dump pile and drill site. Next, we’ll target the drill …
9 May 2016
Sols 1334-1336: Successful drilling at Okoruso
Meet the latest drill hole on Mars: “Okoruso,” created on Sol 1332, seen in the above MAHLI image. Drilling activities went well on Sol 1332, so the weekend plan is focused on sieving the sample and dropping it off to CheMin for analysis. The plan starts with a short science block to acquire a ChemCam RMI image of the drill hole, and Mastcam stereo imaging of the pre-sieve dump location. …
