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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 2 min read
Sols 4226-4228: A Powerful Balancing Act
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image about 10 inches (25 centimeters) from the “Loch Leven” target using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) close-up camera, located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, in daylight on June 16, 2024, sol 4216 (or Martian day 4,216) of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 05:12:12 UTC. Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024
As documented in a previous blog last week, we continue to juggle power constraints as we focus on analyzing our newest drilled sample on Mars: “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Today, the star of the show is a planned dropoff to SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite) and evolved gas analysis of the drill sample. This activity requires significant power so the team had to be judicious in planning other science observations and balancing the power needs of the different activities.
While the team eagerly awaits the outcome of the SAM and CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction instrument) analyses of Mammoth Lakes 2, we continue to acquire other observations in this fascinating area that will assist in our interpretations of the mineralogical data. ChemCam (the Chemistry and Camera instrument) will fire its laser at the “Loch Leven” target to get more chemical data on a target that was previously analyzed by APXS (the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer). “Loch Leven” is an example of gray material that rims the Mammoth Lakes drill block. The remote imaging capabilities of the ChemCam instrument will also be utilized to acquire a mosaic of a nearby area with interesting lighter- and darker-toned patches within the exposed rocks. Mastcam (Mast camera, for color stills and video) will document the ChemCam “Loch Leven” target and image the Mammoth Lakes 2 drill hole and surrounding fines to monitor any changes resulting from wind. We will also acquire extensions to two previous Mastcam mosaics: “Camp Four” and “Falls Ridge.”
To continue monitoring atmospheric conditions, the team also planned a Navcam (grayscale, stereoscopic Navigation cameras) large dust devil survey and Mastcam tau observation, an overhead image to measure dust in the atmosphere above Curiosity. Standard DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument), REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station), and RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) activities round out the plan.
Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Jun 27, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4222-4224: A Particularly Prickly Power Puzzle
This image was taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4219 (2024-06-19 02:22:26 UTC). Earth planning date: Friday, June 21, 2024
All our patient waiting has been rewarded, as we were greeted with the news that our drill attempt of “Mammoth Lakes 2” was successful! You can see the drill hole in the image above, as well as the first place we attempted just to the left. The actual drilling is only the beginning – we want to see what it is we’ve drilled. We’re starting that process this weekend by using our laser spectrometer (LIBS) to check out the drill hole before delivering some of the drilled material to CheMin (the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction instrument) to do its own investigations.
The next step in a drill campaign is usually to continue the analysis with SAM (the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite), which tends to be quite power hungry. As a result, we want to make sure we’re going into the next plan with enough power for that. That meant that even though we’ve got a lot of free time this weekend, with three sols and CheMin taking up only the first overnight, we needed to think carefully about how we used that free time. Sometimes, when the science teams deliver our plans, we’re overly optimistic. At times this optimism is rewarded, and we’re allowed to keep the extra science in the plan. Today we needed to strategize a bit more, and the midday science operations working group meeting (or SOWG, as it’s known) turned into a puzzle session, as we figured out what could move around and what we had to put aside for the time being.
An unusual feature of this weekend’s plan was a series of short change-detection observations on “Walker Lake” and “Finch Lake,” targets we’ve looked at in past plans to see wind-driven movement of the Martian sand. These were peppered through the three sols of the plan, to see any changes during the course of a single sol. While these are relatively short observations – only a few minutes – we do have to wake the rover to take them, which eats into our power. Luckily, the science team had considered this, and classified the observations as high, middle, or low priority. This made it easy to take out the ones that were less important, to save a bit of power.
Another power-saving strategy is considering carefully where observations go. A weekend plan almost always includes an “AM ENV Science Block” – dedicated time for morning observations of the environment and atmosphere. Usually, this block goes on the final sol of the plan, but we already had to wake up the morning of the first sol for CheMin to finish up its analysis. This meant we could move the morning ENV block to the first sol, and Curiosity got a bit more time to sleep in, at the end of the plan.
Making changes like these meant not only that we were able to finish up the plan with enough power for Monday’s activities, but we were still able to fit in plenty of remote science. This included a number of mosaics from both Mastcam and ChemCam on past targets such as “Whitebark Pass” and “Quarry Peak.” We also had two new LIBS targets: “Broken Finger Peak” and “Shout of Relief Pass.” Aside from our morning block, ENV was able to sneak in a few more observations: a dust-devil movie, and a line-of-sight and tau to keep an eye on the changing dust levels in the atmosphere.
Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University
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Last Updated Jun 21, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4219-4221: It’s a Complex Morning…
There are many whiteish rocks in the area that lately attracted the team’s special interest, as this image, taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4217 (2024-06-17 02:10:34 UTC) shows. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, June 17, 2024
Who thought it was a good idea to select a name with the word ‘mammoth’ in it? Well, we don’t remember who did it, and if we did, we wouldn’t say anyways… but these rocks take ‘Mammoth Lakes’ and seem to translate it into ‘Mammoth Effort’ for the team here on Earth! You may have seen my colleague Conor’s blog about ‘The best laid plans’, and today we tried again.
For a start, orbital mechanics wasn’t our friend on this nervous Monday morning: the data we needed reached us – as scheduled – in the early morning hours; hence assessment could only begin shortly before the normal start of the planning day. The assessment of a preload test is not a quick task as it concerns rover health and safety. Even with over 11 years of experience, engineers want to look very, very closely. Or shall I say, tongue in cheek, after over 11 years of experience we want to look even closer as we have seen many of the ways Mars rocks can play tricks on us and we are pretty sure that the rocks have even more surprises up their sleeves! We don’t want to get caught out by… a rock!
With that assessment still ongoing (can you feel the nerves?!), the team had to start planning assuming we would go ahead with the drill. I was Geo Science Theme Lead today, and it was my task to help navigate through the things that we would want to do, if we pass the preload assessment and are going to drill. And it was also agreed that if this isn’t going to work today, we would try another preload test. The science team really wants to see what these bright rocks are made of, as bright, almost white colour on a basaltic planet always means that it is different and interesting.. Water rock interactions are my favourite possible explanation, but I don’t want to speculate, I prefer to interpret data… but those would come after the drill! Cliffhanger, part one, we kept asking those with an ear close to the engineering rooms for updates, but the only updates were that there are no updates… yet. I am not good at waiting, are you?
We were planning four sols today, but one of them is a ‘soliday’ – a day on Earth with no corresponding sol on Mars. They come up occasionally to re-synchronise Earth and Mars timings (and to not make downlinks even closer to start of planning). This is because an Earth day is 24 hours long, but a Mars day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds long. Therefore, Mars and Earth days get slowly but surely out of sync and planning would have to happen in the middle of the Earth night. Therefore, Curiosity gets a break thanks to orbital mechanics (and human sleep patterns). But just before Curiosity gets a break (and the humans, too, for Juneteenth), there is a lot of work to do, even with this cliffhanger still ongoing.
The plan started – optimistically, and yes, with the cliffhanger STILL ongoing – with the full drill and everything we always do to assess whether the drill is successful. This includes an image of the newly accomplished (hopefully, are you keeping your fingers crossed?!) drill hole, an image of the drill bit inspecting our tools, and a ChemCem Remote Micro Imager mosaic of the drill hole. ChemCam also does a passive spectral investigation of the drill tailings (are you still holding your breath that we even get to uplink the commands?!). Most of the drill activities happen on sol 4219, and just the ChemCam activities happen in sol 4220. Also, on sol 4220 ChemCam investigates the target “Longley Pass,” which is also a whitish rock.
Well, if these rocks play tricks on us and make us wait this long for an answer, we can at least shoot them with a laser and get some more data this way. Mastcam documents the ChemCam target Longley Pass and does two more single frame images of the targets “Walker Lake2” and “Finch Lake,” both of which you will have seen in previous blogs. They are part of a change detection campaign, where we repeatedly image the same location to find out if the sand moves. This helps with assessing the current winds on Mars. But that’s just the warm up for Mastcam, which will then embark on a 334 image journey 360° around the rover, also known as a 360-panorama. Given the very exciting landscape, we are all very much looking forward to getting to see this! But before that, the question is still there: will we get the go for drilling?! It’s one and a half hours into planning, and we still don’t know.
Finally on sol 4221 there is more ChemCam laser activity, this time on the target Quarry Peak, and there is a long-distance mosaic by ChemCam, too, to further document all the different sedimentary structures around us. Last but not least, our part of the plan had some ‘homework’ in form of a ChemCam calibration activity. There is more, of course, as the environmental group looks at dust devils and the opacity of the atmosphere and the DAN instrument performs its routine cadence of measurements. It’s a fully packed plan!
And the cliffhanger? Well, not so fast… after the initial planning meeting everyone who has assembled parts of the plan will meet in the so-called Science Operations Working Group meeting. I was really hoping for a result then, but we were told we had to wait just a little longer. Mars doesn’t make things easy, and we fully trust the engineers to make the right call. But will that call be the one the scientist in me wants? Will we drill?
We got through all of this meeting and about an hour later had a fully integrated plan, and still no word from the engineers. Come on, Mars, do you have to make it this hard?!
Planning rarely gets this tight and nerve wracking to be honest. But then, when Mars decides to write the script, we can either decide that we forego the measurement… or that we try again. And try again was what we were after.
Almost two hours of planning done, time for a break in the planning meeting cadence and dinner in my part of the world, but I wasn’t really hungry, to be honest. I just wanted to hear the outcome.
And finally, 3 hours and 38 minutes after the start of planning, “GO GO GO” accompanied by a smiley with a wide grin appeared in the chat, straight from Ashwin, the project scientist.
And breathe… Let’s hope Mars rewards our brilliant engineers’ efforts!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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Last Updated Jun 18, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4216-4218: Another ‘Mammoth’ Plan!
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4212 (2024-06-11 22:04:23 UTC) NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, June 14, 2024
At the start of this week, we did a preload test on the target “Mammoth Lakes,” the rightmost bright ellipse (DRT ellipse, so less dusty) on the workspace image above. The preload test shows the stability of the rock, making sure it doesn’t move and that it doesn’t look like it will fracture under pressure from the drill. This is obviously a very important test! For example, if the rock fractured, the arm might slip down unexpectedly, so we really want to get that confirmation before we commit to drilling here. We also want to ensure the arm can adequately control the orientation of the drill as it makes progress into the rock. Unfortunately, as Conor reported on Wednesday, the preload test didn’t give us the information that we wanted to go ahead with full drill. However, this workspace (“Whitebark Pass”) is very intriguing, so the RPs found us a second spot (“Mammoth Lakes 2”), about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) away from the original “Mammoth Lakes” to do a preload test.
The GEO (Geology and Mineralogy) theme group took advantage of the extra time to further document the color variations and lithological types in this workspace. Mammoth Lakes is centered on the main slab, but the rim of the slab is darker in color. APXS and MAHLI will analyze along this rim at “Loch Leven” for comparison to the center of the slab (e.g., Mammoth Lakes, analyzed by APXS and ChemCam, and imaged by Mastcam and MAHLI on sol 4212) and the whiter, pitted float rocks along the edge of the slab (e.g., “Snow Lakes”, analyzed by APXS and ChemCam, and imaged by Mastcam and MAHLI on sol 4202).
ChemCam will analyze the darker material, using LIBS on “Split Lake,” about 15.8 inches (40 centimeters) away from the Loch Leven target, and the underlying bedrock farther away from the rover at “Big Five Lakes.” They will also use ChemCam passive to look at “Grass Lake” – you can see the bright DRT ellipse for this target in the center of the workspace image above, as it was an APXS and MAHLI target on sol 4209. Both LIBS targets will be imaged by Mastcam. ChemCam will also take an RMI (Remote Micro Imager) 10×1 mosaic image (i.e., one row of 10 images) of a collection of loose rocks in the distance.
The Mastcam team have a very busy plan. On the morning of the first sol (4217), Mastcam will take a large 19×5 mosaic of the Texoli butte, looking at the stratigraphy and erosional surfaces under morning illumination.
Then it is taking advantage of the stop here at Whitebark Pass, with two larger experiments that need to run over several sols (days). The first is a series of change-detection images on the targets “Walker Lake” and “Finch Lake,” taken at different times over multiple sols to look for movement of sand grains, etc. The second is a photometry experiment – this involves taking multiple sets of observations at specific times of day (sunset and sunrise) at the same location in order to study surface scattering properties.
Mastcam will also support the ENV (environmental) theme group today, taking a series of tau images to help constrain dust levels in the atmosphere. ENV have stuffed their section of the plan with dust devil scans and movies, and zenith (looking directly upwards) and suprahorizon (looking in a more horizontal direction) movies, in addition to regular DAN, RAD and REMS activities. APXS will also take an atmospheric measurement, overnight on the second sol, specifically to track seasonal argon changes.
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Jun 17, 2024 Related Terms
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Emil Cherrington and Christine Evans led the final chapter of the S-CAP Regional Road Show 5/9-10/24 at the SERVIR HKH hub at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal. The exchange at SERVIR HKH followed up prior S-CAP focused capacity building activities that were conducted in Central America (February 2023, October 2023), Amazonia (March 2023), Southeast Asia (August 2023), and West Africa (November 2023). About a dozen participants from ICIMOD participated, including the three main implementers of the HKH Regional Land Cover Monitoring System (RLCMS). Cherrington and Evans were also invited to present on S-CAP in the upcoming 7/22-26/24 SERVIR / SilvaCarbon workshop in Nepal being led by AST PI Sean Healey (USDA Forest Service).
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