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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 More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4327-4328: On the Road Again
This image was taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity using its Left Navigation Camera on sol 4326 — Martian day 4,326 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 7, 2024, at 01:16:16 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Oct. 7, 2024
After successfully completing investigations within Gediz Vallis, Curiosity is back on the road through the Mg-sulfate (magnesium sulfate) bearing unit. The terrain under our wheels is a familiar collection of broken up blocks, and we’re keeping our rover eyes on the more distant stratigraphy and the deposits within the Gediz Vallis channel (as seen in the above Navcam image). Our traverse along this side of the channel is a great chance to understand the erosional and depositional history of Gediz Vallis from a different perspective, and to characterize variations in the sulfate unit.
I was on shift as Long-Term Planner today, and it was a pretty straightforward two-sol plan, with contact science on the first sol and driving on the second sol. The team planned a great collection of measurements to characterize the rocks in our workspace and more distant features.
The plan starts with remote sensing, including ChemCam LIBS on a gray, smooth slab at “Paloma Meadows,” followed by two long-distance RMI mosaics to assess the thickness and distribution of white clasts in Gediz Vallis. Then Mastcam will document Paloma Meadows and a distant dark clast at “Sky Parlor Meadow” to understand the variety of rock types and where they might have come from. The remote sensing block also includes a Navcam observation to search for dust devils. Later in the afternoon Mastcam will acquire a mosaic looking back towards “Whitebark Pass” including the white clasts (some of which were previously tied to observations of high sulfur) and the distribution of deposits within “Pinnacle Ridge.” Then Curiosity will use the instruments on the arm to assess one of the blocks in our workspace at “Pincushion Peak.” We’ll use the DRT, MAHLI, and APXS to assess the grain size, textures, and composition of a nodular block of bedrock. On the second sol Curiosity will acquire ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam of Pincushion Peak, which will make for a nice set of coordinated observations. The second sol also includes a long-distance RMI mosaic of an interesting dark block to assess sedimentary structures, and two Navcam observations to characterize atmospheric opacity and the movement of fines on the rover deck. Then Curiosity will continue driving, and take post-drive imaging to prepare for a similar plan on Wednesday. Looking forward to continuing to explore what’s under our wheels and on the horizon!
Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
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Last Updated Oct 09, 2024 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 More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 4 min read
Sols 4289-4290: From Discovery Pinnacle to Kings Canyon and Back Again
This image shows the workspace in front of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, taken by the Left Navigation Camera aboard the rover on sol 4287 — Martian day 4,287 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Aug. 28, 2024, at 02:23:27 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Aug. 28 2024
We are back … almost, anyways. Today’s parking location is very close to where we parked on sol 4253, and in an area near one of the previous contact science targets “Discovery Pinnacle.” You can read in this blog post that most of the team, this blogger included, was in Pasadena for our team meeting when we were last in this area. That was July and Curiosity was about to turn 12 on Mars. Coming back is a very rare occasion and is always planned carefully. Once or twice during the last 12 years it happened because we saw something “in the rear mirror.” One of the examples is the target “Old Soaker,” where we spotted mud cracks in the images from a previous parking position, and promptly went back because this was such an important discovery. At other times it was carefully planned, such as the “walkabout” at “Pink Cliffs,” which you can watch in this video from as long back as Earth year 2015. In the past few planning cycles, it’s more of the latter as we made our way from Discovery Pinnacle, where we were on sol 4253, “Just passing through” “Russell Pass” and arriving at “Kings Canyon,” our drill location, which we reached on sol 4257. You can follow all the action of the drilling at Kings Canyon on the blogs. It took a while — it always does — because it’s an activity with many steps and investigations to complete. We actually celebrated Curiosity’s 12th birthday at Kings Canyon! We departed on sol 4283, came back via “Cathedral Peak,” and are now near the Discovery Pinnacle location again. After that little walkabout through the history of (some) of Curiosity’s walkabouts, especially the very last one, let’s look at today’s plan.
It is a pretty normal two-sol plan, with a one-hour science block before we drive away from this location. We were greeted by a nicely flat surface, and the engineers informed us that we have all six wheels firmly on flat and stable ground. That’s always a relief, because only then can we use the arm. That nice piece of flat rock Curiosity is so firmly parked on became our science target …well, mostly. Some of the little pebbles on the surface attracted our attention, too. The very eagle-eyed can spot a small white spot in the image above. It’s right between the arm and the rover itself, about where the C is written. That’s a rock that we likely broke up with our wheel and that has a very white part to it. We called it “Thousand Island Lake,” and will image it with MAHLI. APXS is investigating a target called “Eichorn Pinnacle,” squarely on the big flat area. LIBS is also making the most of the large target underneath and in front of us, investigating the target “Nine Lakes Basin.”
In recent blogs you will have read about the dust-storm watch making the atmospheric investigations even more important, so we don’t miss any changes. We are looking for dust devils, atmospheric opacity, and are of course monitoring the weather throughout the plan.
Our drive will hopefully — if Mars agrees — be a long one, and we will also plan an activity that we call MARDI sidewalk. That’s when we take very frequent pictures with the MARDI instrument while driving. This results in a long strip of images nicely showing the nature of the terrain the rover has driven over. This is in addition to the MARDI single frame we are taking every time the rover stops. I often get the question, why are we taking an image just downwards whenever the rover stops? Well, humans are easy to bias toward the outliers, toward the things that look special, and of course the Curiosity team is no exception. For some things this is great, because it allows for the discoveries of new things. But it doesn’t provide an unbiased overview. That’s what MARDI does: It always points down and reliably records the terrain under the rover. We don’t have to do anything but put the commands for that one image into our plan after the drive — something that’s pretty routine after 12 years now!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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Last Updated Aug 29, 2024 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 More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4259-4260: Kings Canyon Go Again!
MAHLI image of the brushed “Kings Canyon” target NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Monday, July 29, 2024
Our weekend drill preload test on the target “Kings Canyon” (shown in the accompanying MAHLI image) didn’t give us the full range of data we need to move forward with the full drilling process. This coming Wednesday, we hope to rerun our preload test on Kings Canyon or somewhere very similar on the same bedrock, and to get APXS and ChemCam analyses in order to determine scientific suitability for drilling. As a result, this plan focused on getting the arm ready to fulfill those diagnostic activities, described by our Science Operations Team Chief Elena in last Friday’s blog.
In the meantime, we are in such an interesting area that we have a very long liens list (our wish list). Our problem today and probably for the foreseeable future will be a good one – trying to keep below our upper limits on how much of that wish list we are going to try to get in on a given day!
We have recently seen examples of bedrock slabs or outcrops with a flat, paler toned centre and a rim of darker, greyer material which surrounds the main slab. We saw this about 50 sols ago at the Mammoth Lakes drill site and we see it here too. The relationships between the centre of the slab and the rim are very intriguing and we are keen to understand the interplay between the two textures. Mastcam will take two large mosaics in this area. “Sam Mack Meadow” is a 7×4 mosaic (i.e., 4 rows of 7 images) on an area of crushed grey material, and “Merced Grove” is a 7×6 mosaic on more intact rim material. ChemCam have also planned a LIBS analysis of Merced Grove and one at “Clinch Pass” in the centre of the block. Together these activities will help us to look at relationships here and to compare with previous examples, such as at the Mammoth Lakes drill site.
ChemCam will acquire a passive measurement on “Wilts Col,” a small dark toned float rock about 4 metres away from the rover as part of a continuing campaign to assess the nature of the floats (loose rocks) which are strewn around this part of the crater. ChemCam will also acquire 2 RMI (long distance images) 10×1 mosaics, looking at the stratigraphy and layering of the distant hills – getting a head start on the science assessment before we even get close!
The atmosphere and environment science theme group (ENV) also crammed their section of the plan full of activities. Since landing (almost 12 years ago now!!), the ENV group has been reporting on environmental conditions in Gale, and this plan was no exception. We have some regular DAN passives, REMS activities and a Navcam dust devil movie, and a single Mastcam “Tau” measurement, which looks at dust in the atmosphere.
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Jul 30, 2024 Related Terms
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4 min read
NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen
In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before.
The brightest gamma-ray burst yet recorded gave scientists a new high-energy feature to study. Learn what NASA’s Fermi mission saw, and what this feature may be telling us about the burst’s light-speed jets. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”
A paper about the discovery appears in the July 26 edition of the journal Science.
When matter interacts with light, the energy can be absorbed and reemitted in characteristic ways. These interactions can brighten or dim particular colors (or energies), producing key features visible when the light is spread out, rainbow-like, in a spectrum. These features can reveal a wealth of information, such as the chemical elements involved in the interaction. At higher energies, spectral features can uncover specific particle processes, such as matter and antimatter annihilating to produce gamma rays.
“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence for absorption and emission features in other GRBs, subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations. What we see in the BOAT is different,” said coauthor Om Sharan Salafia at INAF-Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy. “We’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a noise fluctuation are less than one chance in half a billion.”
A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. The star’s core ran out of fuel and collapsed into a black hole. Some of the matter swirling toward the black hole was redirected into dual jets firing in opposite directions. We see a gamma-ray burst when one of these jets happens to point directly at Earth. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos and emit copious amounts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star exhausts its fuel, collapses, and forms a rapidly spinning black hole. Matter falling into the black hole powers oppositely directed particle jets that blast through the star’s outer layers at nearly the speed of light. We detect GRBs when one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth.
The BOAT, formally known as GRB 221009A, erupted Oct. 9, 2022, and promptly saturated most of the gamma-ray detectors in orbit, including those on Fermi. This prevented them from measuring the most intense part of the blast. Reconstructed observations, coupled with statistical arguments, suggest the BOAT, if part of the same population as previously detected GRBs, was likely the brightest burst to appear in Earth’s skies in 10,000 years.
The putative emission line appears almost 5 minutes after the burst was detected and well after it had dimmed enough to end saturation effects for Fermi. The line persisted for at least 40 seconds, and the emission reached a peak energy of about 12 MeV (million electron volts). For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from 2 to 3 electron volts.
So what produced this spectral feature? The team thinks the most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.
“When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV,” said coauthor Gor Oganesyan at Gran Sasso Science Institute and Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy. “Because we’re looking into the jet, where matter is moving at near light speed, this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and pushed toward much higher energies.”
If this interpretation is correct, to produce an emission line peaking at 12 MeV, the annihilating particles had to have been moving toward us at about 99.9% the speed of light.
“After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” noted Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.”
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Several transient luminous events illuminate pockets of Earth’s upper atmosphere. A line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa powers the rare phenomena. NASA/Matthew Dominick NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth’s upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024. The bright red flashes (more easily seen by clicking on the photo to see a larger version) are a less understood phenomena associated with powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere. Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are colorful bursts of energy that appear above storms as a result of lightning activity occurring in and below storms on Earth.
Crew members typically capture TLEs with wide focal lengths during Earth timelapses. Instruments mounted outside station, like Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), can capture a range of data for researchers on Earth using cameras, photometers, X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. Learn more about seeing storms from space.
While space station crew hunt for TLEs from space, you can help right here on Earth: send your photographs of sprites and other TLEs to NASA’s citizen science project, Spritacular, to contribute to a crowdsourced database that professional scientists can use for research.
Image Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick
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