Bumping to a Better Position: Sols 3973-3974

Bumping to a Better Position: Sols 3973-3974
by Abigail Knight | Graduate Student - Washington University
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 10, 2023

Earth planning date: Monday, October 9, 2023: After the drive this weekend, Curiosity has arrived at another light-toned band that we hope to evaluate for drilling before solar conjunction begins next month. We have some light-toned, slightly nodular rocks in our workspace serving as potential drill target candidates.

The goal today at the start of planning was to do contact science with APXS and MAHLI and assess targets for drilling and subsequently investigation with CheMin and SAM. We unfortunately determined that the positioning of the rover's front left wheel precluded drilling, so we will be bumping to a better position to set us up for success if we decide to proceed with our drill campaign later this week.

There is no use of the arm in this plan, so there are no MAHLI or APXS observations. The first sol of our plan has a morning science block with a Navcam line-of-sight observation to assess dust in the atmosphere, Mastcam extension of our current workspace, and ChemCam LIBS observation of light-toned bedrock target "Three Sirens" with Mastcam documentation. The afternoon science block includes a Navcam cloud shadow movie, Navcam cloud zenith movie, and Mastcam solar tau.

The second sol of the plan has another morning science block, including a Navcam suprahorizon movie to characterize the atmosphere, Navcam dust devil movie, ChemCam LIBS observation of dark and flaky bedrock target "Yokuts," ChemCam long-distance mosaic to continue the documentation of Peace Vallis, and Mastcam documentation of "Yokuts."

We then have our mobility backbone, where we hope to reposition Curiosity to enable an option to drill later in the week, followed by post-drive imaging. Later, we have another science block including a Navcam dust devil survey, Navcam cloud zenith movie, and Navcam suprahorizon movie. Finally, we have a MARDI observation to round out this two-sol plan.

Driving Along the Rocky Road: Sols 3970-3972
by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist - JPL
Earth planning date: Friday, October 6, 2023: Unfortunately the drive we'd hoped to complete on sol 3969 didn't execute due to a well understood issue, so we're going to try again today.

The drive will take us just a few meters to the south to reach a rock the team is considering as a possible drill target. In the meantime, we're taking advantage of the fact that we have additional data of this location's workspace from the sol 2968-2969 plan to build on the contact science observations we collected previously in the week. Using the high resolution MAHLI images from Wednesday, our intrepid rover planners were able to figure out how to safely brush the "Helen Lake" target, which we'll be doing in today's plan. We'll collect APXS and additional MAHLI images of Helen Lake after that event, plus MAHLI images of "Heart Lake" and MAHLI and APXS of "Feather Peak."

Curiosity will be doing more than contact science too! We'll continue to document the area around us with Mastcam, collecting a 21x3 M100 mosaic to complement previous coverage of the areas. We'll also take some Mastcam documentation images of three ChemCam LIBS targets named "Black Kaweah," Heart Lake, and "Sonora," and some long distance ChemCam RMI mosaics of the Gale Crater rim and Kukenan butte. Additional environmental science monitoring activities, including observations to image dust in the sky and search for dust devils, will round out the weekend plan.

Dreaming of a Drill Campaign:Sols 3968-3969
by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist - MSSS
Earth planning date: Wednesday, October 4, 2023: Winter is almost half over in Gale, but this rover doesn't hibernate! The last time we stopped for more than a few sols was at the Ubajara drill site back in early May, almost 1 kilometer and 150 sols ago. Now, five months later, we're approaching our next drill site in this area of alternating banded layers dispersed across lithified sand. The scientist jury is still out on which block is their favorite, but the operations team is already preparing to begin a two-to-three week drill campaign in the near future. With solar conjunction fast approaching, it'll be interesting to see how much of a drill campaign we can fit between now and November 11th.

For this two-sol, unrestricted plan, we're waking up with a remote science block containing two Navcam activities to measure the atmospheric opacity and search for dust devils (we've seen some large ones recently!). Mastcam will follow up with a mono, Mastcam Right-only mosaic of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge we've been driving parallel to since our crater cluster campaign. ChemCam will finish off the block with a 5x1 LIBS raster on a nodular bedrock target named "Black Giant," with Mastcam Right documenting the effort afterwards.

On sol 3953 (September 20th, 2023) the Mastcam-34mm (Mastcam Left) filter wheel stalled between filters L0 (clear) and L1 (green) while running a multispectral atmospheric opacity (tau) imaging sequence. Since then, the Mastcam team has been sending a series of diagnostic commands with varying motor drive parameters, in an effort to characterize the problem and get the filter wheel back to the L0 position where it is most often used.

To date, some progress has been made, and the team is hopeful that the L0 position will be reached soon. Analysis will then continue to determine if the filter wheel can be safely returned to normal service. Remember, this rover has been outside Earth's protection since late 2011! This isn't the first time our engineering team fixed something remotely and it won't be the last.

After another Mastcam Left diagnostic activity completes, our first arm backbone will kick off and includes two contact science targets: "Helen Lake" (a less dusty dark-toned layer) and "Marion Peak" (a slightly dustier dark-toned layer). Here's an example of a dark-toned layer fragment (where Blackcap Mountain was!) sitting atop the light-toned layer from sol 3962.

MAHLI will take a full-suite of images on Helen Lake from 25cm, 5cm, and 2cm away and another mini-suite of images on Marion Peak from 25cm and 5cm away. After the imaging, our arm turret will spin to the APXS frame for their evening integrations on the two targets. The first orbiter to pass over our rover will be the Trace Gas Orbiter, which should send our remote and arm data back to Earth by ~3:30am Pacific tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

We mostly nap the night away, and on the second sol we'll wake up with another remote sensing block starting again with a Navcam dust devil movie. Mastcam will follow up this time with some near-field mosaics of sand troughs between blocks (I like this example from sol 3966), and ChemCam will shoot their second LIBS target named "Bridgeport" on a smoother piece of bedrock. With all our arm activities done, we'll be ready to drive and potentially end up near our next drill site. Our post-drive data will start coming down to Earth at ~5am Pacific on Friday, and from that we'll begin our weekend planning while our rover rests her wheels for the night.