Back on Track: Sols 3871-3872

Mars Exploration News

Back on Track: Sols 3871-3872

This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3870. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Back on Track: Sols 3871-3872
by Alex Innanen | Atmospheric Scientist - York University
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 26, 2023

We started planning today with the great news that our drive was successful! This put us in a perfect position for our split touch-and-go plan - lots to see, and no need to worry that we might be on unsteady footing, like we were on Friday.

Our two nearby targets are bedrock blocks: the nodular bedrock 'Lousoi,' which we'll be investigating up close (the 'touching' in the touch-and-go) with APXS and MAHLI; and the ChemCam LIBS target, 'Valvousi,' which is on the face of another block.

Adjacent to Valvousi is a small trench, which Mastcam will take a look at. Masctcam and ChemCam will also be looking further afield. Mastcam is taking a mosaic of the ridge to our south, and ChemCam is looking behind us towards the Gediz Vallis Ridge. After we finish up, we're taking a late afternoon drive southeast along our alternate route.

After this busy sol, Curioisty will spend most of the second sol of the plan napping, but will wake up for a few observations around noon. ChemCam will use AEGIS to autonomously look for a post-drive target. ENV also has some of our normal atmospheric monitoring activities, including a suprahorizon cloud movie, a tau observation to monitor dust, and a 360 degree dust devil survey.

Related Links
Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

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Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 23, 2023
Today we started planning at a location short of our intended drive end position. Mars has, once again, not read our script! Regular readers of this blog will have noticed lately that many reports start with some news about a shortened drive that didn't quite complete, and that Abigail got really excited on June 20th, when three drives in a row had completed successfully. And that's not the rover's fault and of course also not the fault of our excellent engineers who try to navigate this extremely chall ... read more

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