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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 2 min read
Sols 4458-4460: Winter Schminter
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of the Texoli butte, a Martian landmark about 525 feet (160 meters) tall, with many layers that scientists are studying to learn more about the formation of this region of the Red Planet. The butte is on the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed and has been exploring since 2012. The rover acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on sol 4456, or Martian day 4,456 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, on Feb. 17, 2025, at 17:51:56 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025
During today’s unusual-for-MSL Tuesday planning day (because of the U.S. holiday on Monday), we planned activities under new winter heating constraints. Operating Curiosity on Mars requires attention to a number of factors — power, data volume, terrain roughness, temperature — that affect rover operability and safety. Winter means more heating to warm up the gears and mechanisms within the rover and the instruments, but energy that goes to heating means less energy for science observations. Nevertheless, we (and Curiosity) were up to the task of balancing heating and science, and planned enough observations to warm the science team’s hearts.
We fit in DRT, APXS, and MAHLI on two different bedrock targets, “Chumash Trail” and “Wheeler Gorge,” which have different fracturing and layering features. In the workspace, ChemCam targeted a clean vertical exposure of layered bedrock at “Sierra Madre” and a lumpy-looking patch of resistant nodules at “Chiquito Basin.”
The topography of the local terrain and our end-of-drive position after the weekend fortuitously lined up to give us a view of an exposure of the Marker Band, which we first explored on the other side of Gediz Vallis Ridge. Having a view of another exposure of this distinctive horizon helps give us further insight into its origin, so we included both RMI and Mastcam mosaics of the exposure.
Documenting a feature that, unlike the Marker Band, has been and will be in our sights for a long time — “Texoli” butte (pictured above) — was the goal of additional Mastcam and ChemCam imaging. Observations of potential sedimentary structures on the flank of Texoli motivated acquisition of an RMI mosaic, and a chance to capture structures along its southeast face inspired a Mastcam mosaic. Good exposures of additional nearby bedrock structures at “Mount Lukens” and “Chantry Flat” drew the eye of Mastcam, while another small mosaic focused on the kind of linear troughs in the sand we often see bordering bedrock slabs. Environmental observations included Navcam cloud and dust-devil movies, Mastcam observations of dust in the atmosphere, and REMS and RAD measurements spread across the three sols of the plan.
Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
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Last Updated Feb 20, 2025 Related Terms
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The Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) team hosts a Media Day at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on April 11, 2023.Credit: NASA Media are invited to visit NASA’s simulated Mars habitat on Monday, March 10, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The simulation will help prepare humanity for future missions to the Red Planet.
This is the second of three missions as part of NASA’s CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), set to begin in May 2025 when volunteer crew members enter the 3D printed habitat to live and work for a year.
During the mission, crew members will carry out different types of mission activities, including simulated “marswalks,” robotic operations, habitat maintenance, personal hygiene, exercise, and crop growth. Crew also will face planned environmental stressors such as resource limitations, isolation, and equipment failure.
The in-person media event includes an opportunity to speak with subject matter experts and capture b-roll and photos inside the habitat. Crew members will arrive for training at a later date and will not be available at this event.
To attend the event, U.S. media must request accreditation by 5 p.m. CDT Monday, March 3, and international media by 5 p.m., Monday, Feb. 24, via the NASA Johnson newsroom at: 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@nasa.gov. Media accreditation will be limited due to limited space inside the habitat. Confirmed media will receive additional details on how to participate.
For more information about CHAPEA, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea
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Cindy Anderson / James Gannon
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
cindy.anderson@nasa.gov / james.h.gannon@nasa.gov
Kelsey Spivey
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
kelsey.m.spivey@nasa.gov
Victoria Segovia
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
victoria.segovia@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Feb 20, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Humans in Space Analog Field Testing Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) Johnson Space Center View the full article
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2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
During the Apollo program, when NASA sent humans to the Moon, those missions took several days to reach the Moon. The fastest of these was Apollo 8, which took just under three days to go from Earth orbit to orbit around the Moon.
Now it’s possible to save some fuel by flying different kinds of trajectories to the Moon that are shaped in such a way to save fuel. And those trajectories can take more time, potentially weeks or months, to reach the Moon, depending on how you do it.
Mars is further away, about 50 percent further away from the Sun than Earth is. And reaching Mars generally takes somewhere between seven to ten months, flying a relatively direct route.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission took about seven and a half months to reach Mars. And NASA’s MAVEN mission took about ten months to reach Mars.
Jupiter is about five times further away from the Sun than the Earth is. And so in order to make those missions practical, we have to find ways to reduce the fuel requirements. And the way we do that is by having the spacecraft do some flybys of Earth and or Venus to help shape the spacecraft’s trajectory and change the spacecraft’s speed without using fuel. And using that sort of approach, it takes between about five to six years to reach Jupiter.
So NASA’s Galileo mission, the first mission to Jupiter, took just a little over six years. And then NASA’s second mission to Jupiter, which was called Juno, took just under five years.
So to get to the Moon takes several days. To get to Mars takes seven to ten months. And getting to Jupiter takes between five and six years.
[END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]
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Last Updated Feb 19, 2025 Related Terms
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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 2 min read
Sols 4454-4457: Getting Ready to Fill the Long Weekend with Science
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image, which includes the pyramid-shaped rock at left in the photo, the science target dubbed “Pyramid Lake,” using its Left Navigation Camera. The rover acquired the image on sol 4452, or Martian day 4,452 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, on Feb. 13, 2025, at 14:22:06 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 14, 2025
Curiosity is continuing to make progress along the strategic route, traversing laterally across the sulfate (salt) bearing unit toward the boxwork structures. The team celebrated the completion of another successful drive when we received the downlink this morning, and then we immediately got to work thinking about what’s next. There is a holiday in the United States on Monday, so instead of the typical three-sol weekend plan, we actually planned four sols, which will set us up to return to planning next Tuesday.
The first sol of the plan focuses on remote sensing, and we’ll be taking several small Mastcam mosaics of features around the rover. One of my favorite targets the team picked is a delightfully pointy rock visible toward the left of the Navcam image shown above. The color images we’ll take with Mastcam will give us more information about the textures of this rock and potentially provide insight into the geologic forces that transformed it into this comical shape. The team chose what I think is a very appropriate name for this Martian pyramid-shaped target — “Pyramid Lake.” The terrestrial inspiration behind this name is a human-made reservoir (lake) near Los Angeles with a big (also human-made) pyramidal hill in it.
On the second sol of the plan, we’ll use the instruments on Curiosity’s arm to collect data of rock targets at our feet, including “Strawberry Peak,” a bumpy piece of bedrock, “Lake Arrowhead,” a smooth piece of bedrock, and “Skyline Trail,” a dark float rock. ChemCam will also collect chemical data of Skyline Trail, “Big Tujunga” — which is similar to Strawberry Peak — and “Momyer.” We’ll also take the first part of a 360-degree color mosaic with Mastcam!
In the third sol of the plan, we’ll complete the 360-degree mosaic and continue driving to the southwest along our strategic route. The fourth sol is pretty quiet, with some atmospheric observations and a ChemCam AEGIS. Atmospheric observations are additionally sprinkled throughout other sols of the plan. This time of year we are particularly interested in studying the clouds above Gale crater!
I’m looking forward to the nice long weekend, and returning on Tuesday morning to see everything Curiosity accomplished.
Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Last Updated Feb 17, 2025 Related Terms
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