Sols 2962-2964: Stop and Enjoy the Views

Curiosity is continuing to observe the local geology at the parking spot that we arrived at on Wednesday (see Wednesday’s blog post here) before continuing our trek up Mount Sharp. Today we planned three sols’ worth of activities to keep Curiosity nice and busy over the weekend.

On the first sol (Sol 2962) of our weekend plan, Curiosity will analyze several bedrock targets around the rover with ChemCam to assess the diversity of geologic materials that we’ve been encountering along our drive path. After that, we’ll spend the second and third sols (Sol 2963-2964) taking in all of the fantastic views that we have from this location. Closest to the rover, we’ll take a Mastcam multispectral observation on a nearby target “Ben Hee.” Looking further ahead, we’ll take a few larger Mastcam stereo mosaics to document the margin of the Greenheugh pediment and adjacent sulfate unit buttes. In addition, we’ll use the ChemCam Remote Micro Imager (RMI) to take a handful of long-distance mosaics to image a few interesting areas of the sulfate unit off in the distance. These areas are shown above in the Navcam image. Early next week we’ll wrap up our science observations at this location and hit the dusty trail!

Written by Rachel Kronyak, Planetary Geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory