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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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Last Updated Apr 01, 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 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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Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:15:30 Meet Arnaud Prost—aerospace engineer, professional diver, and member of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve. From flying aircraft to getting a taste of spacewalk simulation, his passion for exploration knows no bounds.
In this miniseries, we take you on a journey through the ESA Astronaut Reserve, diving into the first part of their Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany. Our “ARTists” are immersing themselves in everything from ESA and the International Space Station programme to the European space industry and institutions. They’re gaining hands-on experience in technical skills like spacecraft systems and robotics, alongside human behaviour, scientific lessons, scuba diving, and survival training.
ESA’s Astronaut Reserve Training programme is all about building Europe’s next generation of space explorers—preparing them for the opportunities of future missions in Earth orbit and beyond.
This interview was recorded in November 2024.
You can listen to this episode on all major podcast platforms.
Keep exploring with ESA Explores!
Learn more about Arnaud’s PANGAEA training here.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Ice cover ebbs and flows through the seasons in the Arctic (left) and the Antarctic (right). Overall, ice cover has declined since scientists started tracking it half a century ago. Download this visualization from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5099Trent Schindler/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Winter sea ice cover in the Arctic was the lowest it’s ever been at its annual peak on March 22, 2025, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. At 5.53 million square miles (14.33 million square kilometers), the maximum extent fell below the prior low of 5.56 million square miles (14.41 million square kilometers) in 2017.
In the dark and cold of winter, sea ice forms and spreads across Arctic seas. But in recent years, less new ice has been forming, and less multi-year ice has accumulated. This winter continued a downward trend scientists have observed over the past several decades. This year’s peak ice cover was 510,000 square miles (1.32 million square kilometers) below the average levels between 1981 and 2010.
In 2025, summer ice in the Antarctic retreated to 764,000 square miles (1.98 million square kilometers) on March 1, tying for the second lowest minimum extent ever recorded. That’s 30% below the 1.10 million square miles (2.84 million square kilometers) that was typical in the Antarctic prior to 2010. Sea ice extent is defined as the total area of the ocean with at least 15% ice concentration.
The reduction in ice in both polar regions has led to another milestone — the total amount of sea ice on the planet reached an all-time low. Globally, ice coverage in mid-February of this year declined by more than a million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers) from the average before 2010. Altogether, Earth is missing an area of sea ice large enough to cover the entire continental United States east of the Mississippi.
“We’re going to come into this next summer season with less ice to begin with,” said Linette Boisvert, an ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”
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Observations since 1978 show that ice cover has declined at both poles, leading to a downward trend in the total ice cover over the entire planet. In February 2025, global ice fell to the smallest area ever recorded. Download this visualization from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5521Mark Subbaro/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio Scientists primarily rely on satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which measure Earth’s radiation in the microwave range. This natural radiation is different for open water and for sea ice — with ice cover standing out brightly in microwave-based satellite images. Microwave scanners can also penetrate through cloud cover, allowing for daily global observations. The DMSP data are augmented with historical sources, including data collected between 1978 and 1985 with the Nimbus-7 satellite that was jointly operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It’s not yet clear whether the Southern Hemisphere has entered a new norm with perennially low ice or if the Antarctic is in a passing phase that will revert to prior levels in the years to come,” said Walt Meier, an ice scientist with NSIDC.
By James Riordon
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters
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Last Updated Mar 27, 2025 LocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center 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 4491-4492: Classic Field Geology Pose
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam), showing the rover’s right-front wheel perched on a small, angular block, where it ended its weekend drive of about 75 feet (23 meters). In the interest of stability, the Curiosity team prefers to have all six rover wheels on the ground before deploying its 7-foot-long robotic arm (2.1 meters), so they opted for remote sensing observations instead, then another drive higher in the canyon. Curiosity captured this image on March 23, 2025 — sol 4489, or Martian day 4,489 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:24:49 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Earth planning date: Monday, March 24, 2025
If you’ve ever seen a geologist in the field, you may have seen a classic stance: one leg propped up on a rock, knee bent, head down looking at the rocks at their feet, and arm pointing to the distant stratigraphy. Today Curiosity decided to give us her best field geologist impression. The weekend drive went well and the rover traversed about 23 meters (about 75 feet), but ended with the right front wheel perched on an angular block. In the Front Hazcam image above, you can see the right front wheel on a small block, and the rover’s shadow with the mast staring out at all the exciting rocks to explore. Great pose, but not what we want for planning contact science! We like to have all six wheels on the ground for stability before deploying the robotic arm. So instead of planning contact science today, the team pivoted to a lot of remote sensing observations and another drive to climb higher in this canyon.
I was on shift as Long Term Planner today, and it was fun to see the team quickly adapt to the change in plans. Today’s two-sol plan includes targeted remote sensing and a drive on the first sol, followed by an untargeted science block on the second sol.
On Sol 4491, ChemCam will acquire a LIBS observation of a well-laminated block in our workspace named “Big Narrows,” followed by long-distance RMI observations coordinated with Mastcam to assess an interesting debris field at “Torote Bowl.” The team planned a large Mastcam mosaic to characterize the stratigraphy at Texoli butte from a different viewing geometry than we have previously captured. Mastcam will also be used to investigate active surface processes in the sandy troughs nearby, and an interesting fracture pattern at “Bronson Cave.” Then Curiosity will drive further to the south and take post-drive imaging to prepare for the next plan. On the second sol the team added an autonomously selected ChemCam AEGIS target, along with Navcam movies to monitor clouds, wind direction, and dust.
Keep on roving Curiosity, and please watch your step!
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Last Updated Mar 26, 2025 Related Terms
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