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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Sols 4498-4499: Flexing Our Arm Once Again
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 30, 2025 — Sol 4496, or Martian day 4,496 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 20:12:48 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth planning date: Monday, March 31, 2025
Planning today began with two pieces of great news. First, our 50-meter drive (about 164 feet) from the weekend plan completed successfully, bringing us oh-so-close to finally driving out of the small canyon that we’ve been traversing through and toward the “boxwork” structures to our southwest. Second, we passed our “Slip Risk Assessment Process” (SRAP), confirming that all six of Curiosity’s wheels are parked firmly on solid ground. Avid readers of this blog will be familiar with last week’s SRAP challenges, which prevented us from using the rover’s arm for the entire week. With a green light on SRAP, we were finally able to put our suite of contact science instruments back to work today.
The arm gets to work early on the first sol of this plan, with an APXS integration on “Los Osos,” a bedrock target in our workspace, after it has been cleared of the ubiquitous Martian dust by DRT. The rest of our arm activities consist of a series of MAHLI observations later in the afternoon, both of Los Osos and “Black Star Canyon.”
Of course, just because we managed to get contact science in this plan doesn’t mean we’re letting our remote sensing instruments take a break. In fact, we have more than two hours of remote sensing, split between the two sols and the two science teams (Geology and Mineralogy [GEO] and Atmosphere and Environment [ENV]). GEO will be using Mastcam to survey both the highs and the lows of the terrain, with mosaics of “Devil’s Gate” (some stratigraphy in a nearby ledge) and some small troughs close to the rover. We’ll also be getting even more Mastcam images of “Gould Mesa,” an imaging target in many previous plans, as we continue to drive past it. ChemCam gets involved with a LIBS observation of “Fishbowls,” which will also be imaged by Mastcam, a post-drive AEGIS, and two RMI mosaics of Gould Mesa and “Torote Bowl,” which was also imaged over the weekend.
ENV’s activities are fairly typical for this time of year as Curiosity monitors the development of the Aphelion Cloud Belt (ACB) with several Navcam cloud movies, as well as seasonal changes in the amount of dust in and above Gale with Navcam line-of-sight observations and Mastcam taus. We’ll also be taking a Navcam dust devil movie to see if we can catch any cold-weather wind-driven dust movement. ENV also filled this plan with their usual set of REMS, RAD, and DAN observations.
The drive planned today is significantly shorter than the one over the weekend, at just about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This is because we’re driving up a small ridge, which limits our ability to see what’s on the other side. Although our rover knows how to keep itself safe, we still prefer not to drive through terrain that we can’t see in advance, if it can be avoided. Once we’ve got a better eye on what lies in front of us, we will hopefully be able to continue our speedy trek toward the boxwork structures.
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Last Updated Apr 03, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the upcoming “boxwork” structures to its west, using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The ChemCam instrument studies the chemical composition of rocks and soil, using a laser to vaporize materials, then analyze their elemental composition using an on-board spectrograph. The ChemCam RMI is a high-resolution camera atop the rover’s mast. Curiosity captured this image on March 27, 2025 — Sol 4493, or Martian day 4,493 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:35:21 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025
Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as tight as they are, though, keeping the arm stowed freed up more time to check some lines off our rover’s weekend list. To do: SAM activity to exercise Oven 2 (check!), Navcam 360-degree “phase function” sky movie to monitor scattering of Martian clouds (check!), APXS atmospheric measurements of argon (check!), ChemCam passive sky measurements of oxygen (check!), and a drive of about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest (check!). Curiosity gets busy on the weekends so us PULs can do some lounging.
On the Mastcam team, we’ve been pretty busy in the layered sulfate unit. The rocks are rippled, layered, fractured, and surrounded by sandy troughs. Where did it all come from? What current and past processes are at play in this area? This weekend we’re collecting 70 images to help figure that out. ChemCam is helping by collecting chemistry measurements of the lowest block in this Navcam image, with two targets close by aptly named “Solana Beach” and “Del Mar.” To help conserve power, we’ve been trying to parallelize our activities as much as possible. Recently this means Mastcam has been taking images while ChemCam undergoes “TEC Cooling” to get as cold as possible before using their laser.
We’re all hoping the arm can come back from vacation next week.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Visiting Mars on the Way to the Outer Solar System
Written by Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator, SuperCam instrument / Co-Investigator, SHERLOC instrument at Purdue University
A portion of the “Sally’s Cove” outcrop where the Perseverance rover has been exploring. The radiating lines in the rock on the left of the image may indicate that it is a shatter cone, showing the effects of the shock wave from a nearby large impact. The image was taken by Mastcam-Z’s left camera on March 21, 2025 (Sol 1452, or Martian day 1,452 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:13:44. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was voted by the public as “Image of the week.” NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU Recently Mars has had a few Earthly visitors. On March 1, NASA’s Europa Clipper flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of the Red Planet’s surface on its way out to Jupiter. On March 12, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft flew within about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of Mars, and only 300 kilometers from its moon, Deimos. Hera is on its way to study the binary asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos. Next year, in May 2026, NASA’s Psyche mission is scheduled to buzz the Red Planet on its way to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, coming within a few thousand kilometers.
Why all these visits to Mars? You might at first think that they’re using Mars as an object of opportunity for their cameras, and you would be partially right. But Mars has more to give these missions than that. The main reason for these flybys is the extra speed that Mars’ velocity around the Sun can give them. The idea that visiting a planet can speed up a spacecraft is not all that obvious, because the same gravity that attracts the spacecraft on its way towards the planet will exert a backwards force as the spacecraft leaves the planet.
The key is in the direction that it approaches and leaves the planet. If the spacecraft leaves Mars heading in the direction that Mars is traveling around the Sun, it will gain speed in that direction, slingshotting it farther into the outer solar system. A spacecraft can typically gain several percent of its speed by performing such a slingshot flyby. The closer it gets to the planet, the bigger the effect. However, no mission wants to be slowed by the upper atmosphere, so several hundred kilometers is the closest that a mission should go. And the proximity to the planet is also affected by the exact direction the spacecraft needs to go when it leaves Mars.
Clipper’s Mars flyby was a slight exception, slowing down the craft — by about 1.2 miles per second (2 kilometers per second) — to steer it toward Earth for a second gravity assist in December 2026. That will push the spacecraft the rest of the way to Jupiter, for its 2030 arrival.
While observing Mars is not the main reason for their visits, many of the visiting spacecraft take the opportunity to use their cameras either to perform calibrations or to study the Red Planet and its moons.
During Clipper’s flyby over sols 1431-1432, Mastcam-Z was directed to watch the skies for signs of the interplanetary visitor. Clipper’s relatively large solar panels could have reflected enough sunlight for it to be seen in the Mars night sky, much as we can see satellites overhead from Earth. Unfortunately, the spacecraft entered the shadow of Mars just before it came into potential view above the horizon from Perseverance’s vantage point, so the sighting did not happen. But it was worth a try.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, Perseverance is performing something of a cliff-hanger. “Sally’s Cove” is a relatively steep rock outcrop in the outer portion of Jezero crater’s rim just north of “Broom Hill.” Perseverance made an approach during March 19-23, and has been exploring some dark-colored rocks along this outcrop, leaving the spherules behind for the moment. Who knows what Perseverance will find next?
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 25, 2025 — sol 4491, or Martian day 4,491 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 17:16:50 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University
Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
It’s my second shift of the week as the Environmental theme lead and keeper of the plan (a bit of a mouthful we shorten to ESTLK) and today started out feeling eerily similar to Monday. Once again, Curiosity is posing like a geologist, which means that once again we can’t unstow the arm and will be skipping contact science. The silver lining is that this means we have extra time to have a good look around.
The plan also looks similar to Monday’s — targeted remote sensing on the first sol before driving away, and then untargeted remote sensing on the next. On sol 4493 we start our remote sensing, almost as remote as we can get, with a suprahorizon movie looking for clouds in the south. A dust-devil survey rounds out the sol’s environmental observations, and then the geology theme group can get down to the serious business of looking at rocks. For Mastcam this means observing a group of bedrock targets all called “Observatory Trail” (one of which you can see in the middle of the image above), pointing out some interesting veins in “Point Loma,” and casting their gaze out toward “Black Butte” (which I could not think of a fun pun for…). ChemCam has a LIBS observation of “Cholla,” as well as two long-distance observations of the Texoli Butte and the boxwork structures. Our second sol is a little more restrained, as untargeted sols tend to be. But Curiosity will still have plenty of energy after a good rest. We’re taking advantage of that with an extra-long dust-devil movie. Even though we’re in our cloudy season, we still sometimes see dust lifting, and having that extra time to look out for it increases our chances of catching a wind gust or a dust devil in action. Alongside that we also have a Mastcam tau observation to keep an eye on the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and wrap up with a ChemCam AEGIS activity to autonomously choose a LIBS target.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:05:23 For over a decade, ESA’s Gaia mission has mapped our galaxy with stunning precision—rewriting the story of the Milky Way. As its mission enters a new phase, we look back at its most groundbreaking discoveries.
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