In yesterday's blog, Natalie Moore wrote of our continued attempts to drill "Amapari" and word from our beloved rover that our drill was still on the ground when data arrived from Mars. Today we received confirmation that the arm had retracted from the surface, exposing the hole that prompted an earlier than expected termination of our latest drill attempt.

These latest data confirmed we did not reach the desired depth and there was insufficient sample in the drill stem for analysis by CheMin and SAM. As such, the team decided not to pursue portion characterization activities and is considering foregoing further drilling attempts here. Instead, we are considering potentially sampling from the "Marker Band" when we expect to cross it again during our continued traverse up Mount Sharp.

It is easy to look at the post-drill images acquired of the workspace, such as the one headlining this blog (with the rover's shadow nicely framing our drilled bedrock, itself outlined from its surroundings by cracks or voids that formed under the duress of the rover's interrogation attempt) and think we did not get what we wanted here.

But that's hardly the whole story. Our intrepid decade-plus-old rover did her job remarkably. She drilled into the rock, noticed something was not right, and stopped. These safety mechanisms are in place should a situation just like this occur, potentially preventing more dire issues from arising such as irreversible damage to rover hardware.

Our drilling efforts at Amapari prompted me to take a broader perspective and remember what we are doing at a fundamental level. It can be easy to take for granted many aspects of exploring with our rover, as if there's a magic wand we wave and a day or two later juicy morsels of data come from Mars in various forms, confirming or contrasting scientific theories we may have.

But there is no magic wand. Decades of hard work and meticulous planning went into crafting a spacecraft and gently landing it on the surface of another planet. Curiosity is commanded by a remarkable international team spanning numerous disciplines. Together, we make these plans a reality.

We are exploring another world through the digital eyes of cameras built over a decade ago. The images acquired provide us with the data we need to not only drive and conduct image-based science, but also to deploy our 2.3 meter long robotic arm, the end of which has a 30 kg toolbox (referred to as a turret) equipped with a high-resolution camera (MAHLI), an X-ray spectrometer (APXS), a brush (DRT), a scoop, and our percussion drill.

The fact that we are able to place these instruments at the end of a long and massive arm, with cm-to-sub-cm accuracy, on another planet, using only images, is remarkable in and of itself, whether it be to drill, or, as in today's plan, acquire high-resolution images and in situ compositional data.

In today's plan we acquired MAHLI images of the Amapari drill hole and tailings, as well as APXS geochemical analyses of the tailings and nearby mini-drill. These activities are complemented by ChemCam and Mastcam images of our drill workspace; the team opted to forgo LIBS analyses of the drill tailings given the potential to redistribute the drill tailings ahead of our APXS activities.

To me, today also served as a reminder to maintain perspective and to not take for granted the complexity of executing a plan, and to not forget how capable our rover and team are, especially when Mars seemingly has its own agenda. In the days or weeks ahead, we will leave this location. Fresh landscapes and discoveries compel us forward.

The Sequel Continues: Sol 3681
by Natalie Moore | Mission Ops - MSSS
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 13 - This morning's sol 3681 planning started 2.5 hours later than usual due to orbiter timing, which gave all of us plenty of time to wait impatiently for the resulting data of our second drill attempt at "Amapari2" to radiate from Mars at ~10am PST. The drama started right away as the data arrived ~20min after we had expected and our whole day depended on the drilling outcome.

Finally, we saw it: our arm, and most importantly our drill, were still on the ground (see cover image)! Our chatting platform was abuzz with what that meant: our second attempt to drill the Marker Band at Amapari did not complete as planned due to a loss of pressure under the drill (perhaps because the drill reached a void), and we had some on-the-fly planning to do.

While the engineering team combed through the data to figure out next steps for the arm, the science team came up with a few options for what we could plan on sol 3681. Days like this can be challenging for the uplink team since the amount of time, power, and daylight for activities are up-in-the-air until the recovery activities are figured out.

However, thanks to the hard work of our engineers and project team members, the plan was pretty much set by ~1:30pm PST which allowed the uplink team to proceed without further delays.

The good news about the arm on the ground is that our mast instruments were free to target images wherever else in the landscape they desired. So before doing anything with the arm this plan, the science team planned a midday remote science block including ChemCam, Mastcam, and Navcam activities of the martian landscape.

ChemCam will start us off with five laser shots on bedrock target "Koropicai" off to starboard of the arm and a remote-micro-image (RMI) mosaic of a distant ridge we've been calling the "inverted channel."

Mastcam will take over after ChemCam with a documenting color image of the fried Koropicai target and ~100 stereo frames of the landscape to help complete coverage while we're still in this location (reminder: we've been sitting in the same spot since 3672 - that's a lot of time for Mastcam!). Finally, Navcam will point generally south for a 30min movie to hopefully catch some dust devils on the horizon.

After we get some remote science in, the arm will attempt to retract off the ground (taking lots of documentation images while doing so) and move into the intended overnight pose off to port for sols 3682-3683 planning tomorrow.

While the Amapari2 drill attempt did not get to full sample depth, there's reason to hope we may still have some sample to analyze in the drill stem. If all goes well with this plan, the team may decide to deliver whatever sample was collected to CheMin and proceed down our usual drill sol path! Stay tuned, the story of the Amapari drill site will continue evolving tomorrow.

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

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Let's try that again Amapari: Sols 3677-3679
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 12, 2022
On Wednesday, we uplinked a drill plan, to drill the target "Amapari" in the Marker Band. Coming into planning this morning, we learned that the drill was only able to penetrate 7 mm into the hard rock here, and this was not deep enough for the drill to collect sample that could be analyzed by CheMin and SAM. Fortunately, the RPs examined the workspace this morning and found a second similar area, and we are going to try again. Each drill campaign follows a very strict set of guidelines - each tar ... read more