Sol 3137-3138: The Rover Finally Roved

Curiosity is roving again! That gave us the first new view and workspace in just as many weeks, and we were able to have “regular” planning today. Due to the vagaries of the Mars-Earth communication pipeline, we had a “skinny” (i.e., very small) downlink from the rover overnight, which prevented us from having sufficient images of the nearby ground to safely conduct contact science with the arm. But we planned a full two days of remote sensing science including Mastcam images of the workspace and a large mosaic of our planned route up Mt. Sharp, ChemCam passive on the square-ish knobbly rock just left of center in foreground of this Navcam image (“Montaut”), ChemCam long-distance imaging of the buttes of the sulfate unit farther uphill, and a variety of ENV dust devil and cloud movies with Navcam.

Tomorrow after the science activities are complete, we’ll drive ahead, skirting to the right of the sandy regions seen in this Navcam image and continuing our press toward the sulfate unit.

Written by Scott Guzewich, Atmospheric Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center