MISSION UPDATES | October 9, 2020

Sols 2908-2909: Another Soliday Weekend

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
CheMin inlet of Curiosity rover

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm, on August 15, 2020, Sol 2853. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image ›

This weekend, Curiosity’s main task will be to continue preparing to collect and analyze a drilled sample from “Groken.” We will image the CheMin inlet (pictured above from sol 2853) with MAHLI at night to make sure the inlet is clean and ready to accept samples. We’ll also give the inlet a good shake beforehand to break up any clumps of powder from the Mary Anning 3 drilled sample that could have collected there during our last analysis.

We are also celebrating a soliday this weekend (a skipped day where Earth and Mars time zones sync up), so we only had two sols to plan today! On the first sol of the plan, sol 2908, we have a morning science block with a ChemCam observation of a target named “The Fara,” and we’ll take a few more Remote Micro-Imager frames to add to the ever expanding “Housedon Hill” mega-mosaic. We’ll also collect MAHLI and APXS observations of a target in front of the rover named “Trow.” On the second sol of the plan, sol 2909, we’ll take more ChemCam observations of targets named “The Cletts,” “The Barck,” and my personal favorite, “The Clumpers.” These will be accompanied by corresponding Mastcam images as well as a Mastcam multispectral observation of the Trow contact science target. Observations to monitor the environment are also sprinkled throughout both sols of the plan.

Happy solidays to all!