Sol 1726: First Look at Vera Rubin Ridge

A lot of preparation goes into assessing a potential drill site on Mars, and the “Ubajara” target got the usual treatment.

We continue our triage of the “Ubajara” potential drill site in this plan.

Tactical planning started an hour and a half later than usual this morning, because we had to wait for better-illuminated Navcam images of the Ubajara block.

Our weekend drive got us into a good position to attempt to examine a block we might attempt to drill.

We arrived this morning to Curiosity at a new location with some bright toned, and more rounded rocks in our vicinity.

I am ‘shadow’ Geo science team lead (GeoSTL) today, helping a new colleague to learn the details of the role.

We have cleared the canyon! The accompanying Left Navcam image shows the view back down the canyon, showing all those tricky rocks we had to climb over.

It always feels great to reach the top of a mountain, especially when the path was challenging. While the top of Mt. Sharp still looms above Curiosity, the team was very excited to see that in the ...

To quote our project scientist, Ashwin, it was clear when we assessed our downlink that Curiosity had almost literally taken “two steps forward and one steps back” during the drive in our previous ...

Curiosity is carefully and patiently driving up a local canyon, named Marker Band valley, across a variably tilting surface that is scattered with horizontally banded bedrock and patches of sand.

Here in Toronto, the weather feels like summer. But in Gale Crater it’s coming towards the end of Autumn.

After a short bump in yesterday’s plan to get to a better workspace, Curiosity is poised to get a detailed look at the next stratigraphic unit in this small canyon.

As you can see in the above image, the terrain our rover drivers is navigating is challenging - slippery sand surrounding big, wheel-unfriendly rocks.

As Ken noted in his recent blog, our beloved rover spent much of the last week completing a software upgrade while the science team met virtually to synthesize and discuss results.

An issue at a Deep Space Network station prevented the Sol 3785 plan from being sent to Mars, so none of those planned activities occurred.

Signs of spring are all around as most of us come on shift from various locations within the northern hemisphere today.

Due to some delayed downlink of images, we didn’t receive all the information we needed in time to do contact science today.

Curiosity is ten and a half years into operating in Gale cater, a concept that before and even a few years after landing seemed to be an impossible dream.

Monday's planned drive positioned Curiosity with a new workspace to investigate.

Our Tapo Caparo drill campaign is officially concluded and our wheels are turning again!

With a jam packed three-sol plan on her plate, Curiosity won’t have time to kick back and relax this weekend!

Today, we finally leave Tapo Caparo and begin something new. But... actually, we are not going very far.

Today’s 2-sol plan wraps up our remaining drill campaign and workspace liens at Tapo Caparo.

Curiosity has spent the last week or so balancing power constraints to enable remote science and environmental observations, along with the analyses of the “Tapo Caparo” Marker band drilled sample ...

What a contrast! When I look to my right, snow is accumulating on my window (yes, I am under the roof, if you are wondering) and in front of me are pictures of a beautiful red landscape!

We had another later start to planning today, and again are planning only a single sol. In a lot of ways, the plan is similar to yestersol’s.

This morning’s plan started a bit uncertain as we waited for the SAM team to decide whether to proceed with further analysis of the Tapo Caparo drill sample.

Curiosity is in the middle of a drill campaign at Tapo Caparo to characterize the rhythmically laminated unit of the Marker Band.

One of my favorite parts of mission operations is working with colleagues to react quickly to new information, both from the rover and from our ground systems on Earth.

Today we planned a single sol plan.

The tactical operations team was very happy this morning because it appears that a sample of the Tapo Caparo bedrock was successfully acquired!

Yesterday, on our weekly day off from planning, the team awaited Drill Sol 1 triage data to confirm if Tapo Caparo seemed more drillable.

We continue to drive along the Marker Band and found ourselves this morning (as planned) in an area of strongly laminated bedrock.

After a holiday/soliday weekend, we’re back to work with today’s single sol plan, and there’s a lot to pack into it.

Today, I was heading for my computer when my colleagues went off to celebrate the end of the working week.

The team was eagerly awaiting our downlink this morning to hear how the drill attempt from Sol 3742 went.

Today we are drilling the Dinira target! The scientists and engineers have been closely working together to adjust the drilling strategy to give us the best shot of a successful drill while also ma...

The team is taking a little time to work through the best strategy for drilling here, so today’s plan just focused on collecting additional contact science and remote sensing data from around the f...

In Monday's two-sol plan we completed a short drive to another drill location as we continued our attempt to acquire a sample of the Marker Band for potential analysis by SAM and CheMin.

Curiosity successfully followed her tracks and is back near the Encanto drill site! With a beautiful workspace in view, the science and operations team had a busy day of planning on the “Marker ban...

Today we made a three-sol plan for the weekend including contact science, lot of imaging, and a long drive back toward the previously attempted marker band drill target, Encanto.

The drive in our last plan took us to an area that appeared somewhat smoother and brighter from orbit (as well as from drive direction imaging) on the so-called “Marker band” that we have been inve...

The Sol 3727 drive went well, positioning the rover at the transition in the Marker Band that was the goal of the drive.

Today we came in to see another really beautiful workspace.

Your blogger is a little tired right now… I am just back from a field trip to the salt flats in Botswana, guided by colleagues from BUIST University, walking, viewing and sampling in 38 °C heat.

Despite giving it the “old college try,” Curiosity’s attempt to drill into the Marker Band at the “Encanto” site did not reach sampling depth.

In the previous plan, Curiosity conducted a preliminary assessment of the potential drill target “Encanto” (as seen in the above MAHLI image) and today we received the data.

Yesterday’s plan executed successfully including a short bump that placed us in front of an interesting block that may just contain our next drilled target!

Curiosity's science and engineering team members were back at it today after a holiday long weekend, while Curiosity itself was ready and waiting after its own soliday weekend.

We received the data that we had been missing during Wednesday’s planning, so we hit the ground running today, ready to plan for contact science and our drive onto the Marker Band in this new locat...

At this point in the mission, the team is very good at responding to tactical surprises.

Mastcam image of the 3708 workspace.

Curiosity is continuing to make the most of the new year – both on Earth and on Mars which recently entered Mars Year 37, only a few days before the new year on Earth.

The team came into our first day of planning for 2023 to learn that all our holiday activities had executed as expected!