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Sols 4261-4262: Drill Sol 1…Take 2
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Sols 4345-4347: Contact Science is Back on the Table
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Camera on sol 4343 — Martian day 4,343 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 24, 2024 at 15:26:28 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 25, 2024
The changes to the plan Wednesday, moving the drive a sol earlier, meant that we started off planning this morning about 18 meters (about 59 feet) farther along the western edge of Gediz Vallis and with all the data we needed for planning. This included the knowledge that once again one of Curiosity’s wheels was perched on a rock. Luckily, unlike on Wednesday, it was determined that it was safe to still go ahead with full contact science for this weekend. This consisted of two targets “Mount Brewer” and “Reef Lake,” two targets on the top and side of the same block.
Aside from the contact science, Curiosity has three sols to fill with remote imaging. The first two sols include “targeted science,” which means all the imaging of specific targets in our current workspace. Then, after we drive away on the second sol, we fill the final sol of the plan with “untargeted science,” where we care less about knowing exactly where the rover is ahead of time. A lot of the environmental team’s (or ENV) activities fall under this umbrella, which is why our dedicated “ENV Science Block” (about 30 minutes of environmental activities one morning every weekend) tends to fall at the end of a weekend plan.
But that’s getting ahead of myself. The weekend plan starts off with two ENV activities — a dust devil movie and a suprahorizon cloud movie. While cloud movies are almost always pointed in the same direction, our dust devil movie has to be specifically targeted. Recently we’ve been looking southeast toward a more sandy area (which you can see above), to see if we can catch dust lifting there. After those movies we hand the reins back over to the geology team (or GEO) for ChemCam observations of Reef Lake and “Poison Meadow.” Mastcam will follow this up with its own observations of Reef Lake and the AEGIS target from Wednesday’s plan. The rover gets some well-deserved rest before waking up for the contact science I talked about above, followed by a late evening Mastcam mosaic of “Fascination Turret,” a part of Gediz Vallis ridge that we’ve seen before.
We’re driving away on the second sol, but before that we have about another hour of science. ChemCam and Mastcam both have observations of “Heaven Lake” and the upper Gediz Vallis ridge, and ENV has a line-of-sight observation, to see how much dust is in the crater, and a pre-drive deck monitoring image to see if any dust moves around on the rover deck due to either driving or wind. Curiosity gets a short nap before a further drive of about 25 meters (about 82 feet).
The last sol of the weekend is a ChemCam special. AEGIS will autonomously choose a target for imaging, and then ChemCam has a passive sky observation to examine changing amounts of atmospheric gases. The weekend doesn’t end at midnight, though — we wake up in the morning for the promised morning ENV block, which we’ve filled with two cloud movies, another line-of-sight, and a tau observation to see how dusty the atmosphere is.
Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University
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Last Updated Oct 28, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4343-4344: Late Slide, Late Changes
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Camera, showing the fractured rock target “Quarter Dome” just above and to the right of the foreground rover structure. The eastern wall of the Gediz Vallis channel can be seen in the distance. This image was taken on sol 4342 — Martian day 4,342 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 23, 2024, at 12:29:34 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024
Curiosity is driving along the western edge of the Gediz Vallis channel, heading for a good vantage point before turning westward and leaving the channel behind to explore the canyons beyond. The contact science for “Chuck Pass” on sol 4341 and backwards 30-meter drive (about 98 feet) on sol 4342 completed successfully.
This morning, planning started two hours later than usual. At the end of each rover plan is a baton pass involving Curiosity finishing its activities from the previous plan, transmitting its acquired data to a Mars-orbiting relay satellite passing over Gale Crater, and having that satellite send this data to the Deep Space Network on Earth. This dataset is crucial to our team’s decisions on Curiosity’s next activities. It is not always feasible for us to get our critical data transmitted before the preferred planning shift start time of 8 a.m. This leads to what we call a “late slide,” when our planning days start and end later than usual.
Today’s shift began as the “decisional downlink” arrived just before 10 a.m. PDT. The science planning team jumped into action as the data rolled in, completed plans for two sols of science activities, then had to quickly change those plans completely as the Rover Planners perusing new images from the decisional downlink determined that the position of Curiosity’s wheels after the drive would not support deployment of its arm, eliminating the planned use of APXS, MAHLI, and the DRT on interesting rocks in the workspace. However, the science team was able to pivot quickly and create an ambitious two-sol science plan for Curiosity with the other science instruments.
On sols 4343-4344, Curiosity will focus on examining blocks of finely layered or “laminated” bedrocks in its workspace. The “Backbone Creek” target, which has an erosion resistant vertical fin of dark material, will be zapped by the ChemCam laser to determine composition, and photographed by Mastcam. “Backbone Creek” is named for a stream in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada of California flowing through a Natural Research Area established to protect the endangered Carpenteria californica woodland shrub. Curiosity is currently in the “Bishop” quadrangle on our map, so all targets in this area of Mount Sharp are named after places in the Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley of California. A neighboring target rock, “Fantail Lake,” which has horizontal fins among its layers, will also be imaged at high resolution by Mastcam. This target name honors a large alpine lake at nearly 10,000 feet just beyond the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. A fractured rock dubbed “Quarter Dome,” after a pair of Yosemite National Park’s spectacular granitic domes along the incomparable wall of Tenaya Canyon between Half Dome and Cloud’s Rest, will be the subject of mosaic images for both Mastcam and ChemCam RMI to obtain exquisite detail on delicate layers across its broken surface (see image). The ChemCam RMI telescopic camera will look at light toned rocks on the upper Gediz Vallis ridge. Curiosity will also do a Navcam dust devil movie and mosaic of dust on the rover deck, then determine dust opacity in the atmosphere using Mastcam.
Following this science block, Curiosity will drive about 18 meters (about 59 feet) and perform post-drive imaging, including a MARDI image of the ground under the rover. On sol 4344, the rover will do Navcam large dust devil and deck surveys. It will then use both Navcam and ChemCam for an AEGIS observation of the new location. Presuming that Curiosity ends the drive on more solid footing than today’s location, it will do contact science during the weekend plan, then drive on towards the next fascinating waypoint on our journey towards the western canyons of Mount Sharp.
Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Sols 4341-4342: A Bumpy Road
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4329 — Martian day 4,329 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 10, 2024, at 05:35:08 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Oct. 21, 2024
After Curiosity’s busy weekend, the team is ready for another day of planning. We are able to take advantage of the Earth-Mars time offset to full plan on both sols of our plan today. For this plan, I served as Mobility Rover Planner, and planned Curiosity’s drive.
The first sol begins with some remote science. In this block, there is a ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam joint observation of “Ewe Lake,” to look for variation across the different layers in the rock. There is also a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of the “Olmstead Point” target, to see if there are chemical differences that make it darker than the surrounding rocks. Mastcam also is taking a stereo image of “Depressed Lake” (in order to see if this loose block belongs to the Stimson or the Sulfate units) and an image of the ChemCam AEGIS target the rover automatically found after the last drive.
After a nap, Curiosity wakes up to do some contact science on the “Chuck Pass” target, which is a piece of bedrock with laminations and nodules. We perform DRT brushing, MAHLI, and APXS observations of this rock before stowing the arm so we can be ready to drive on the second sol. In the late afternoon, to take advantage of the lighting conditions, we have another short set of Mastcam imaging — an atmospheric sky column observation and a stereo mosaic of “Fascination Turret” from this new angle.
The second sol also kicks off with some remote sensing. We follow up the contact science with ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam of Chuck Pass. ChemCam also takes an RMI looking east back to the area of the white sulfur stones below “Whitebark Pass” to get yet another viewing angle. There is also some atmospheric imaging, Navcam deck monitoring (to see how the dust is moving around on the rover’s deck) and a large dust devil survey.
After the imaging, we are ready to drive. This terrain has been very tricky. While the slopes are not steep, this is a very rocky area, as you can see in the image, making finding a safe path difficult. We don’t only need to worry about driving over things that are too big or too sharp, but we also have to make sure not to scrape the wheels along the side of a rock or steer them into a rock, making them wedge and stall. It also means that we do not have good stereo data out very far because the rocks block our view. The last complication is that we have to drive backwards — otherwise, the rover hardware will block Curiosity’s view of Earth during the time we want to send her the new plan. When we drive backwards, the rover hardware will block Curiosity’s view, so we need to turn to get a clear view in our images. We also take additional frames to be sure we can find the best path for the next drive. With all this, we ended up being able to drive about 32 meters today (about 105 feet). After a short diversion to get around a steering hazard, we were able to drive a fairly straight route along the path to our next major imaging stop. After the drive, we have our normal post-drive imaging, including a twilight MARDI image.
We have been lucky so far on this terrain and been able to successfully complete our recent drives. Hopefully this drive will also be successful!
Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Sols 4338-4340: Decisions, Decisions
This image was taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on sol 4338 — Martian day 4,338 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — Oct. 19, 2024, at 08:29:23 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 18, 2024
On sol 4338, we have a science block planned as well as some arm activities. Our science activities include a ChemCam observation of “Donkey Lake.” This is a bedrock target with exposed laminations. In geology, lamination is a sequence of small-scale, embedded fine layers of sedimentary rock. Next, we will do an RMI mosaic as well as Mastcam imaging on “Fascination Turret” to document the boulder configuration for study of both debris flow and rock deposition processes. We’ll also do a Navcam dust devil survey to study the Martian atmosphere, before moving into our arm backbones. We’ll perform a DRT and APXS on several bedrock targets with exposed layering. An exciting sol for geology!
Sol 4339 presented some interesting decisions for our planning team to make. We started out with a science block. This included a ChemCam LIBS analysis on a soil target with interesting color differences. We also performed an RMI mosaic and Mastcam imaging of “Whitebark Pass” to study possible surface erosion. After this science block, we planned to do a long traverse, which is where planning got a bit tricky.
The drive was a bit complicated to plan. The terrain had lots of rocks which ultimately prevented us from planning a guarded drive (i.e., a drive using auto navigation), which would have extended the drive length. There are occlusion considerations — we always want to end the drive in a good orientation for a communications link. When evaluating our end of drive, there are potential configurations where the line of sight for communications would be blocked, either due to terrain or due to objects on the rover deck. Here, because of the many and large size of rocks in our terrain, we were not confident that auto-navigation would not fault and position us in a bad orientation for our next communications window. With this risk, we decided to take a shorter drive with a sure unoccluded end-of-drive orientation. As planned, our drive will reach about 27 meters (almost 89 feet), whereas a guarded drive if the terrain was better might have yielded around 50 meters (about 164 feet). After the drive, we’ll take some imaging and do a Mastcam survey to observe soils along the traverse path.
On sol 4340, we planned for two science blocks. The first included a ChemCam AEGIS activity — this will allow the rover to examine its surroundings and pick out some interesting targets for analysis. We will also perform a Navcam dust devil movie to capture any interesting dust activities in the atmosphere. Next, we’ll move into our second science block, which is focused on environmental science. We’ll first take Mastcam tau observations, which will allow us to study and measure the optical depth of the atmosphere, which is often used as a proxy to understand the dust in the atmosphere. We’ll also do some early morning remote science, including Navcam cloud movies at zenith and at suprahorizon.
Written by Remington Free, Operations Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Sols 4336-4337: Where the Streets Have No Name
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4329 — Martian day 4,329 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 10, 2024 at 04:19:55 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024
Curiosity continues to drive along the western edge of the upper Gediz Vallis channel. After exiting the channel a few weeks ago, we turned north to image the “back side” of the deposits that we investigated on the eastern side before the channel crossing. As a member of the Channel Surfers working group, we believe that acquiring these views will help further our understanding of the geometry, nature, and evolution of these landforms. The bumpy terrain in front of us, however, plays a role in determining our route and length of drive. The rover planners on the team always do a fantastic job in charting the course on this once-in-a-lifetime road trip. I like to imagine Curiosity with the windows down, blaring U2, as she steadily blazes a new path across the sulfate unit.
With an eye towards imaging in this two-sol plan, Mastcam crafted a large mosaic of “Fascination Turret” that rises above the channel floor. ChemCam fit an unprecedented number of long distance RMI images in the plan that will document the upper extent of the white stone deposit, the nature of the “Kukenan” mound, and characterize the rocks in Fascination Turret at targets named “Chimney Tree” and “Forgotten Canyon.” In our immediate workspace, ChemCam used the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument on a laminated (very thinly bedded) bedrock in the workspace at “Puppet Lake” to determine its chemical composition, which will be documented with a coordinating Mastcam image. MAHLI and AXPS teamed up to analyze a cluster of small gray rocks in front of us at “Jumble Lake.”
The second sol includes a 25-meter (about 82 feet) drive to the west/northwest as we continue along our path adjacent to the channel. The Environmental theme group included a range of activities such as a Mastcam tau that will measure the optical depth of the atmosphere and constrain aerosol scattering properties, dust devil movies, and a suprahorizon movie to monitor clouds.
Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
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