Due to an issue with the Sol 3410 and 3411 plans, parts of the Sol 3410 plan didn't execute and the planned drive did not occur. But the Sol 3409 contact science activities completed successfully, returning nice MAHLI images of bedrock.

Because the rover did not move, the high-gain antenna view of Earth is still occluded, preventing direct communication from Earth and daily uplink. So we will have to send commands to one of the Mars orbiters for relay to the rover from orbit. We can't use this technique every day, so we will not be able to send commands to the rover for Sol 3412 and focused today on planning Sols 3413 and 3414.

This situation made for an exciting and sometimes stressful day for me as SOWG Chair, but happily we were able to plan lots of good activities. Sol 3413 will be a "touch and go" sol, starting with an APXS integration on a bedrock slab named "Appleby" and ChemCam observations of "Geary Ravine" and the Gediz Vallis ridge in parallel.

Then MAHLI will acquire a full suite of images of Appleby and observe another bedrock slab called "Achvarasdal" from 25 and 5 cm above the target. Mastcam will take a multispectral set of images of the "Skaw Granite" brushed spot and document ChemCam LIBS targets.

Mastcam will also acquire a 6x6 stereo mosaic of "Lamington Sandstone" before the rover drives toward the northwest and takes a bunch of post-drive images from its new location. Another MARDI twilight image is planned, followed by an overnight APXS measurement of atmospheric chemistry.

Early on the morning of Sol 3414, Mastcam and Navcam will measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere and search for clouds overhead and above the horizon. Later that sol, ChemCam will autonomously select a LIBS target and shoot its laser at 5 spots on it.

Mastcam and Navcam will then measure dust in the atmosphere again, and Navcam will search for clouds and dust devils. We are looking forward to getting the vehicle into an attitude that will allow direct from Earth communication!

Detailed Caption
Using an onboard focusing process, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity created this product by merging two to eight images previously taken by the MAHLI, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Curiosity performed the merge on March 10, 2022, Sol 3410 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 18:48:31 UTC. The focus motor count position was 13844. This number indicates the lens position of the first image that was merged.

The onboard focus merge is sometimes performed on images acquired the same sol as the merge, and sometimes uses pictures obtained on an earlier sol. Focus merging is a method to make a composite of images of the same target acquired at different focus positions to bring all (or, as many as possible) features into focus in a single image.

Because the MAHLI focus merge is performed on Mars, it also serves as a means to reduce the number of images sent back to Earth. Each focus merge produces two images: a color, best-focus product and a black-and-white image that scientists can use to estimate focus position for each element of the best focus product. Thus, up to eight images can be merged, reducing the number of images returned to Earth to two.

+ Full size uncropped image

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

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Sol 3411: Bonanza
Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 11, 2022
After significant churn in Monday's planning, today turned out to be a single sol's worth of untargeted science. That left GEO with only a ChemCam AEGIS activity, where ChemCam automatically identifies and targets an interesting rock near the rover by itself. ENV than planned a bonanza of atmospheric monitoring activities, as we had power to spare. This included 7 dust devil movies with 4 different cameras: Mastcam, Navcam, and the front and rear Hazcams. This image shows the broad viewshed we ha ... read more